Читать книгу The Lightning Warrior - Max Brand - Страница 10

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Before we quite came to the Baird house, we could hear Sylvia's violin singing and soaring over the voices of a couple of men. When she opened the door to us, flushed and happy and smiling, I saw Tom Benton and Jay von Acker there in the dimness of the room with her. It was one of her favorite amusements. There was mighty little music in Circle City, and Sylvia's fiddle accompanied anyone who had enough of a voice to attempt a song. She saw me first and gave me her usual smile, behind which I don't think there was any real design but which radiated in such a way that, wherever she looked, she seemed to have found something that peculiarly and particularly pleased her. I was a good deal older than most of the boys who flocked around Sylvia, and I should have known better, but now and again she pulled at the strings of my heart in such a way that a little pang of melancholy pleasure would be stirring within me all the rest of the day.

That was the smile she gave me and her hand asking me in. Then she saw two other things, Cobalt and the Lightning Warrior. She would have fallen, I think, or else she would have jumped back into the room. But she got a good grip on the edge of the door and held herself in place. I saw the scream come into her eyes, swell in her throat, and die out again as she mastered herself. All in a moment she was herself again, and actually she went a step past the threshold and gave Cobalt her hand. She gave him her smile, too. I turned about and saw this. The smile was so perfect that no one except Cobalt would have noticed her pallor.

Then came two yells from inside the house. Benton and von Acker came tumbling out to see the great white brute and admire and exclaim over it. Cobalt gave them the smallest half of a smile and no answer at all. So they pulled in their heads and got themselves off down the street.

Sylvia gave me an inquiring look, and I saw that she wanted to be alone on the field of battle, but Cobalt said: "I asked him to come along because I wanted someone to see how you'd get along with the wolf."

"Why should I get along with the Lightning Warrior?" she asked him. "I only wanted his skin."

"There's his skin on him," said Cobalt, "without the mark of a knife or a bullet or the teeth of a trap."

"Goodness!" Sylvia gasped. "How did you manage to do it? But, of course, I knew that you would!"

"Did you?" answered Cobalt, with a little hard ring in his voice that sent tingles up my spine and a weakness down my legs. "Well, there's the skin exactly as you asked for it, Sylvia. Chalmers, she wanted the skin of the Lightning Warrior instead of an engagement ring—without a mark or a break on it. So you're a witness that she has what she asked for."

I hated this being used as a witness. He was going to drive her into a corner.

"Do come in, both of you," she said.

"You wouldn't leave the poor old-timer outside, would you?" asked Cobalt, patting the head of the wolf.

She looked at the Lightning Warrior very much as one might look at incarnate evil. "Well," she commented, "I suppose you think it's safe to have him in the house?"

"Why isn't it?" asked Cobalt. "Look at this!"

He spoke and, at his command, that white murderer sat down, lay down, gave his paw, fetched the hat which Cobalt threw on the snow, and finally stood up on his hind legs, put his forepaws on the shoulders of the man, and looked at him with eyes that were on a level. Their faces were not inches apart. I saw the Lightning Warrior begin to shake and tremble all over, while his lips twitched and blood seemed to flow into his eyes. It was not fear, mind you, that made him quiver. It was a frightful desire to have the life blood of the man, and that impulse was mastered only by a deep-rooted awe.

For my own part, I never saw a picture that chilled me more thoroughly. Poor Sylvia looked on with a sick face. Cobalt would not say a word about the year he had spent in the wilderness, working to get this animal and to subdue it so perfectly. Rather he chose this way of giving one an insight into what he had accomplished. I stared at the face of the wolf and the face of the man, and upon my honor I found them strongly similar, even to the sneering expression. The scar stood out on the face of Cobalt like a thin line of blood. Sylvia saw all these things with eyes at least as sharp as mine.

"If he's so gentle as that," she said, "of course he's welcome in the house. What a beauty he is!"

The Lightning Warrior dropped to the ground and followed his master into the house. There he backed into a corner of the room where the shadow was deepest but through which we still could see the red glint of his eye and the strange blue of its iris, like the blue of Cobalt's own eye. We sat down, and she offered us tea.

"I never drink tea when I'm not on the march," said Cobalt.

We were all silent for a moment. I suppose it was Sylvia's duty to carry on the conversation in some way, but she had to pause and gather her strength for the trial. Just then Sylvia's father came in. He had already heard about the coming of Cobalt, and he was puffing from his rapid walking, returning to his home. He gave us both an eager, worried, half-frightened look before he shook hands and sat down with us.

"A marvelous thing, Cobalt," he said. "Extraordinary! I don't see how you've accomplished it, and I—" His voice trailed away. His eyes had found the red mark on the face of Cobalt.

"Nothing at all," said Cobalt. "Sylvia didn't want an engagement ring. She wanted the skin of the Lightning Warrior. There it is, you see."

Baird tried to laugh, but his voice shook a bit. "You have a sense of humor, Cobalt," he said.

"I hope that I have," said Cobalt, "and a memory, too. I try to laugh when my turn comes. Did you say there was a joke somewhere in this, Mister Baird?"

"Why, Cobalt," said Baird, "of course you understand, man—you know that a girl—on one meeting—you know that a girl couldn't possibly—?" He got altogether stuck.

Sylvia, leaning a bit forward in her chair, watched the two of them with an eager white face. Her hands were clasped hard together in her lap.

"I see what you mean," said Cobalt, appearing very easy in his manner. "Naturally at a first meeting a girl wouldn't send a man off to do a job like that unless she was dead serious. No right-minded girl would let him take his life in his hands and throw away the best dog team that ever hauled sleds out of Circle City and chuck a year of his life into the bargain. Why, Mister Baird, you don't suppose that I think Sylvia would take me as lightly as that? Or you either, for that matter?"

Baird got out a handkerchief and mopped his face. "Not lightly, Cobalt," he said with eagerness. "No one would take you lightly. Only, you understand that a casual remark in a casual conversation—you understand that a girl might casually say something to which she wouldn't actually wish to commit herself."

"Why, then I'll find out," said Cobalt, cool as could be. "Tell me, Sylvia, did you say the thing casually? Did you expect that I would try to do what you suggested, or did you not?"

I never saw grief and ghostly fear more vividly drawn than in the face and the staring eyes of poor Sylvia. My heart ached for her, and I wanted to break in with a few words, but I could find none. One can't jest with the owner about the architecture of his burning house, and one could not be light with Cobalt about his year of labor. He had given himself to the utmost. Something in the drawn lines of his face showed that. Now what would be his reward?

Perhaps a sheer spirit of perversity had driven him onto the thing, but was there some justification, after all? Had he, on the day a year before, seen something in the face, heard something serious in the voice of Sylvia when she made the proposal about the wolf skin instead of an engagement ring?

"Sylvia!" broke out her father suddenly, "we're waiting for you to speak. Were you serious when you spoke to him? Will you answer?"

She seemed about to speak when her father cut in again:

"But take your time. Think it over. Remember everything in that conversation. I've heard it from you before, but I never guessed that there was anything serious in what you and he had said to one another."

She took a breath, then she said: "You can't help me now, Father. I'm thinking back to that day. It was a pretty light conversation, Cobalt, wasn't it?"

"As light," said Cobalt, "as eagle feathers. As light as the feathers that they put on arrowheads. Isn't that about it?"

She stared at him. "You mean," she said, "that we both felt seriously about what we said?"

"I mean," he said, "that I asked you to marry me."

"No," she said, correcting him, "but you did tell me that you were going to marry me. There's a difference."

He nodded. "Did you think I was serious?"

She did not answer for a second or two. My heart counted ten in a roll of thunder during the interval.

Then she replied simply. "Yes, I thought you were serious."