Читать книгу The Mountain Fugitive - Max Brand - Страница 3

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I. — LEON, MISCHIEF-MAKER

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I was not born upon Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, nor upon Thursday, or Saturday, I presume, because the blessings of those days are mixed; but I came into this world upon a Sunday. I was the only child of a butcher in the town of Mendez, in Arizona. His name was Leon Porfilo, and I was given the same appellation. My mother was Irish, of County Clare. I got my red hair from her and my olive skin from my father. He was not a Mexican. There had not been a cross into a Latin race for generations.

My father was a cunning businessman. He had begun life as a common cowpuncher, and he had saved enough out of his monthly wages to finally buy out a butcher's business in the town of Mendez. You have never heard of Mendez; for my part, I hope that I shall never lay eyes upon it again. It lies on a great flat of burned desert with a cool puff of mountains on the northern horizon, to which I turned my heart from my infancy.

Whether in rare summer or bitter winter, heat or ice, sun or shade, give me mountains. I would not have any pleasantly rolling hills. I would have mountains that shoot the eye up to heaven one instant and drop it to hell the next. I would take my rides where the wild goats pasture, and roll down my blankets at night, where the sun will find me first in the whole world the next morning.

But as for the desert, I cannot write the word without seeing the sun-scalded town of Mendez once more, and breathing the acrid clouds of alkali dust which were forever whirling through its streets. I cannot hear the word without an ache behind my eyes as I think of stretching a glance toward that million-mile horizon.

It was a dull huddle of houses in which there lived a handful or two of men and women with sallow, withered faces—old at thirty and bowed at fifty. Even the dogs looked unhappy.

I said that I was an only child, which implies that, although I was born on Sunday, I was cursed. An only child is either too good to be true, or a spoiled, pampered devil. I may admit that I was never too good to be true.

My father had just sufficient means to make me wish that he had more. When I asked for a horse, he could give me a pony—and there you are! The more favors he showered on me, the more I hated him, because he did not give me what I craved. He, in the meantime, toiled like a slave.

I rather despised him because he was such a slave.

My mother was true Irish. She loved her religion, and she loved her son with an equally devout enthusiasm. She would have died for the one as readily as for the other. I soon learned her character as well as that of my father. I learned that I could coax anything from her and whine until I got what I wanted from him.

They continued to consider me a blessing sent to them directly from heaven, until I grew big enough to convince the world that I was something else; and I convinced the world long before I convinced my parents.

I was big-boned, square-jawed, and blunt-nosed; the very type to take punishment without feeling it and deal it out heavily in return. School meant to me nothing but a chance to battle, and the school yard was my tournament field. When the teachers complained about me, my lies at home more than offset their bad reports of me. I posed as a statue of injured virtue in my house.

I went on in this way for a good many years, learning nothing but idle habits and loving nothing but my own way. I was fifteen when a turn came in my life.

Young Wilkins, the son of a well-to-do rancher, came into town riding a fine young horse which his father had given him. Half an hour later I had picked a fight with him, thrashed him soundly, and taken the horse as a natural prize of victory. I did not intend to steal the brute, of course. But I intended to give it the ride of its life—and I did. I brought it back to Mendez a couple of hours later, staggering, foaming, and nearly dead. I found it a fine young colt; I left it a wrecked and heart-broken beast which was not worthy of its keep.

Mr. Wilkins looked at the battered face of his son when he came home and said nothing; he felt in common with most Westerners that if their children could not take care of themselves they must accept the penalty. But when he saw the condition of the colt, he had another thought.

He rode to the home of the sheriff and spoke his mind; and the sheriff rode to the home of my father and found him, in the late evening, just returned from his rounds and wearily unharnessing his fagged team.

The upshot of it was that I did not go to jail, but my father had to buy the colt at a handsome price. That outlay of money was a severe tax, and the sight of the useless new horse in the corral every day was a continual goad to both of my parents. They began to inquire among their neighbors, and the moment these good people found that the doors were opened at last, and that Leon Porfilo, the elder, was willing to hear the truth about his offspring, they unburdened themselves of a thousand truths about me. I was described as a lazy ne'er-do-well, a consummate idler, a stupid bully, a foolish student, and a professional mischief-maker in the town.

"The hangman usually gets youngsters that start out like this!" said the most outspoken of all.

My father came home to my mother and told her everything. There was a storm of tears and of protests; and then my mother sent for the priest. He listened to her patiently. He did not offer to advise her; he did not corroborate the reports of the loose-tongued neighbors; but he said, when she asked him what she could do with me:

"Give young Leon to me for six months. I shall guarantee to teach him his lessons, reform his manners in part, and give him a certain measure of industry."

My mother was enraptured.

"But," continued Father McGuire, "I shall expect a return for these services."

My mother told him that he could ask whatever he wanted, and that Leon Porfilo would be glad to pay.

"I do not want a penny," said Father McGuire. "If I cannot make that young man pay for his lessons and his keep and the trouble I am forced to expend on him, my name is not McGuire! Only, I insist that I shall have absolute and unquestioned charge of him from the first day to the end of six months. During that time you are not to lay eyes upon him.

"At the end of that time, you may see him, and if you like his progress and what he will have to tell you about me and my methods of teaching, you may leave him in my hands for a longer time. If you do not like my way with him, you may have him back, and I shall wash my hands of the matter."

This was a great thing to ask of my mother. I am certain that she could not have consented had it not been that she could not understand the priest's reasons for wishing to take me on such unusual terms. Because what he demanded was a mystery, it overcame any possible objections on the part of either of my parents. Finally, they asked me if I were willing to go to the priest's house and to live with him.

I considered my picture of the priest's life, his comfortable little house, his neat garden filled with well-watered, well-tended flowers, his sheds, always freshly painted, his larder always well-filled with good cookery, and above all the thin, patient, weary face of little Father McGuire himself. A sense of my own bulk overwhelmed me. Any change would have been delightful to me.

I consented at once, and the next day my clothes and books, my whole list of possessions down to my latest fishing rod, were bundled together, and I was sent away to the house of Father McGuire.

I was let into the house by the old servant, a half blind woman who had worked for so many years in that house that she found her way about more by the sense of touch than anything else, I am sure. The sight of her was satisfactory to me. I decided that it would be a simple matter for me to hoodwink her at every turn. She told me that Father McGuire half expected me and that, since he was away making the rounds of his parish—for he was an indefatigable worker for his church—I was to make myself at home and spend the day becoming accustomed to the place and all that was in it.

In the meantime she showed me my room.

I was delighted with it. It was not half so large as my chamber at home. It was in the second story of the little building, and it had a tiny dormer window which looked to the north, but all was as neat as a pin, the floor was freshly painted, the bed was newly made and covered with a crisp white spread, and past the window ran the delicate tendrils of the only successfully raised climbing vine that had ever graced the town of Mendez.

There was a small cupboard where I could put away my gear and my books—the books which I intended to keep as much strangers to me as they had ever been in the past. There was a closet where I hung out my clothes, and then I made a survey of the house and the grounds.

The house itself lay on the edge of the town, near the church. Its grounds were as small, comparatively, as the house in which the good priest lived. In a land where acres could be had almost for the asking, the priest had contented himself with a tiny plot which included room for a flower garden around the house and a vegetable patch behind it, then a wood and cattle shed, and finally a pasture just large enough to maintain the one musty-looking old pony and the cow, which was a comfortable brindle.

My first amusement was to whistle to a passing dog and set it on the cow, and I laughed until my sides ached at the manner in which she went hurtling around the lot, tossing her horns, helpless, with her great udder swinging from side to side.

Then, when I was satisfied with this amusement, I strolled back to the house and, passing the open kitchen window, purloined a delicate blackberry tart which was cooling on the sill.