Читать книгу Marbleface - Max Brand - Страница 10

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That evening, I sat up in my room and wrote a letter to Betty Cole in New York. It was the third I had sent to her since I left her there at the garden gate.

I told her everything that had happened, and I put my conscience to her like this:

What would you call it?

I'm going out to get a man, kidnap him, and bring him into this town of Piegan, if I can. It's illegal. But the same fellow is trying to have my boss murdered. I'll be jailed, or worse, if I'm caught. But I don't feel that I'm going crooked. I don't think you would, either, if you knew the state this town is in. The people expect the Makerites to rush their place at any time and set fire to it, sweep it out of existence, and butcher the inhabitants. They're red-hot to become the county seat, which means that the county would spend a lot of money here putting up buildings. They're so hot to get the buildings erected that murder is in the air.

Well, I'm going to try to get Mr. Maker here until the county election is over. That will give my side the main and upper hand in stuffing the election boxes with ballots all over the county. When the thing is over, I'm going to try to get Maker safely away again. That I haven't told to Colonel Riggs.

Perhaps you'll say that I'm a black sheep. Perhaps I am. Anyway, I was tired of running. I don't know what other work I could do. So I'm tackling this.

This is a country you would like. It has a lot of raw edges, but it has size, and I gather that you'd like size. I'm not strong enough to do this country justice, but maybe you would!

When I finished writing that letter, I went downstairs to post it and asked the colonel if the coast was clear. He said that he had cleared it for me and that the detectives were both out of town traveling as hard as they could along a false scent with which he had provided them. Riggs seemed cheerful, but nervous, and he asked me when I wanted to make my move, and how many men and what equipment I would want to have. I asked the distance to Makerville, and when he said that it was only twenty miles, with a fairish sort of a road in between, I said that I would go that same night.

As for equipment, I wanted a good, fast team of horses, and another team to lead behind—they could draw the buggy on the trip back. I wanted a man to drive, and a man to look after the led horses. Both of them ought to be armed with rifles and revolvers. Otherwise, I wanted nothing.

Riggs seemed taken aback by the readiness with which I proposed to start and he asked me with a great deal of eagerness what plans I had made. I told him that I had made no plans at all, as yet, but that I wanted to see a plan of Makerville.

I mailed the letter, and then he took me back into his office and raked out a map of the rival city. It was a huge roll of paper that he hung on the wall. Most of the space was covered with red outlines. They were to represent the dreams of what the city ought to be. The actual facts about the buildings that already had been put up were delineated in black, and there was not more than a handful of black in the midst of that acre of red.

"Why, colonel," I said, "it seems to be a city on the same scale as Piegan, eh?"

He turned his head rather slowly from regarding the map and he eyed me steadily, with just a suspicion of a twinkle coming into his eyes.

"I don't know what you mean by that, Jerry," said he.

"I didn't think that you would," said I.

We both grinned openly. It made us feel a lot more at ease with one another.

Then we studied the map out with a lot of care. He showed me where Maker Creek cut through the center of town, and where the bridge spanned it, and the main stem of the place, and the house which Sid Maker himself lived in, a little out from the rest of the village.

"That's better," I said. "Not so many people in earshot—if there should be a fuss."

"Not so many people? He lives surrounded with people!" said Colonel Riggs. "Confound him, if it hadn't been for that"

He stopped himself short and cleared his throat in a good deal of confusion. I could only infer that if Maker had not surrounded himself with a bodyguard of friends, Colonel Riggs would have cut him off long before this.

The game they played in that part of the world in those days was as hard as you please to think it.

Now that I had the town of Makerville firmly in mind, I sat down and drew off a sketch of it from memory, compared it with the original, saw the mistakes that I had made, drew it again, and then again. At last I was very nearly letter-perfect. I needed to be, because I would not only be working in a strange place, but also in the dark.

Before I finished, the colonel came back, looking very pleased with himself. He said that he had two men who were made to order for work like this. They would be at my disposal the moment I wanted them. He also had a good, strong buckboard; one of the two hired hands was greasing the wheels. And there would be four horses as tough as shoe leather. They would gallop all the way to Makerville and back, if need were.

In finishing, he pointed out that it was already after sundown!

Yes, he was as keen as a ferret that I should start the work at once, and I could hardly keep from laughing as I saw him striding about the office on his long, cranelike legs. However, there was plenty to crowd the laughter back in my throat, when I thought forward to the job that lay ahead.

Then the colonel took me out the back door of the hotel and across a vacant lot. There, waiting in a lane inches deep with dust, was the outfit—a two-seated buckboard, a span hitched to it, and another pair on a lead behind. The men who waited with the rig were humped over, looking no more human than shapeless sacks in that dim light.

Riggs made me acquainted with "Slim Jim" Earl, on the driver's seat, and Dan Loftus, handling the led horses. We shook hands all around. The colonel wanted to put in a big bottle of whisky, but I made him take it back with him. We said good-by, I stepped into the rig, and off we went, swishing through the dust. It was exactly nine o'clock.

Daylight had ended long ago, but every star was out in a pure sky, and the loom of the trail was distinct enough before us. One could always tell the difference in color between the dust of its surface and the darker ground around us. But we could not see well enough to dodge ruts and bumps.

I never had such a rough ride in my life. It fairly jolted and hammered the life out of me, especially during the first miles. For Slim Jim Earl wanted to distinguish himself immediately and show how careless he was and what a breakneck driver. Finally I had to tell him to pull up, and that he was the bravest driver in the world, but that I was not the bravest passenger.

He grunted when I said that, but he managed to control his disgust.

After that, we went along at a more moderate gait, but that road was the work of the devil. Rather, it was not work at all—it was simply an accident that happened to connect the two towns of Makerville and Piegan. It dipped into hollows, climbed to rises, staggered along bumpy levels, and swayed down again into abysmal depths which often had a cold, ominous glint of starlit water in them. Once we crossed running water so deep that it almost touched the body of the wagon.

No matter with what caution we navigated that road, the straining and the bumping began to tire me terribly. We went along, I should say, at about seven miles an hour; it would be after midnight before we arrived, even maintaining a steady pace. But I had to stop the buckboard twice and walk ahead of it. A pinch was coming in my side, threatening to double me up.

When we came in sight of the glimmer of lights in Makerville, I pulled up the buckboard again, wrapped up in a blanket, and lay down on the bottom of the wagon. They wanted to know what was the matter, and I said that we were too early for the execution of my plan. That was not true. I simply had to get the kinks out of me and stop the pattering downfall of my heartbeats. So I lay there and looked at the stars, and went to sleep.

When I wakened, it was more than an hour later—just one-thirty, to be exact—and I was cold and stiff. But the heart was behaving now, for the first time in hours, and I cared little about anything else.

My two companions were disgusted. They would hardly answer when I spoke to them. They had sat up, shivering, all the time that I lay snug in the blanket. And it was a cold night. The wind was not strong, but it was nicely iced by the mountain snows over which it had blown.

They asked me what share they were to take in what was about to happen, and I told them that they were simply to wait where I wanted them. Where I wanted them was a good deal closer in. It was across the bridge, and bang up close to the house of the creator of Makerville.

"They may be watching that bridge," said Slim Jim, as we came closer to it.

But there was no light showing, and I thought that we might be able to chance it. So we drove straight onto it. The sound grew more and more hollow beneath the hoofs of the horses; the heavy planks that made the bridge surface began to rattle like castanets at the sides.

When we got to the top of the arch, I could see the glimmer of the water up and downstream, and two or three lights gleaming on it. A moment later, three men stepped out and covered us with double-barreled shotguns.

Yes, we put up our hands.

A man can take a chance with a revolver, and half a chance with a rifle. But shotguns are poison, at close range, and these were close. One fellow stood at the heads of the horses. The others were on each side of us.

"Where's Doc, with the lantern?" one of the trio asked, and another said that "Doc" was coming at once.

We could see him running toward us, his shadow swinging crazily between heaven and earth, with the lantern flashing beside him.

"This is an outrage," Slim Jim Earl was saying.

"Maybe it is, boys," said one of the three. "We ain't here to please ourselves, but to please Mr. Maker. It may be an outrage, but we ain't taking any chances. After all, it ain't a very long cry from here to Makerville, is it?"

The lantern bearer came up and flashed the light in our faces.

"By thunder!" he cried out. "These are Piegan men! I recognize that one! He's Slim Jim Earl, one of Riggs's crooks!"