Читать книгу The Mountain Fugitive - Max Brand - Страница 7

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That battle crowned me with a very new sort of glory. The other youngsters of Mendez had seen me rush into fights and absorb perhaps more punishment than I gave out until I battered the other fellow down by simply bulldogging my way through to the end. But this was very different. Style once seen, cannot be mistaken, and the clean-cut hitting and blocking and footwork which they had watched in me was a thrilling thing to my compatriots of Mendez. That day was a continual triumph to me, until I came back to the house of Father McGuire.

There was something in his mind; I could tell that by the way he looked at me, but it seemed at first to be entirely jovial.

"I hear," said the good priest, "that you have had a fight with big Harry Chase."

"Where did you hear that?" said I, as any vain boy would have asked.

"The whole town is talking of very little else," said Father McGuire. "You gave him a fine thumping, Leon?"

He smiled at me. It seemed to me that I could feel his pride in me, and I expanded and swelled under the warmth of it.

"He had enough before the finish," said I, and I was eager to tell him more. I wanted to dig into the details of that battle. There was no one else on the whole cattle range, I felt, who could understand the fine points of the work which I had done; there was no one else with whom it was really worth while to talk.

Father McGuire took out his pipe and stuffed it carefully.

"Well," he said at last, "you had a big job on your hands, I see!"

"Why?" said I.

"Why? Because he was older. Isn't he nineteen or twenty years old?"

"He's seventeen—or maybe eighteen," said I.

"But then he's much larger. I suppose he's fifteen or twenty pounds heavier than you are?"

"Not ten," said I.

Father McGuire shook his head. "Nevertheless it was a risky business," said he. "Here was a fellow older, heavier, and stronger than you are"

"Who said that he is stronger than I?" I exclaimed.

"Ah, but he must be, Lee. He has such a reputation!"

"I dunno what gave him the reputation," said I aggressively, for I hated the imputation that any boy of my own age or thereabout might be greater in sheer might of hand than I.

"Well," said Father McGuire, "we know that he's the younger brother of the famous Andrew Chase"

I was hugely impressed by this. As a matter of fact, I had not heard anything about the Chase family in particular since they had come into our section of the range. But of a certain Andrew Chase I had heard vague reports from time to time.

"But Andrew Chase is a middle-aged man, isn't he?" said I.

Father McGuire smiled. "Will you call twenty-one, middle-age?" said he.

"Ah? Is he only that age? How have we happened to hear so much of him? Has he been a killer? Is he still?"

I was swelling with enthusiasm. Father McGuire looked a little sadly, a little sternly, upon me.

"I hope that you never have to know Andrew Chase any better than you know him now," said he. "As a matter of fact, he has not been a killer. Andrew is a hero, my boy."

"What has he done?" said I.

"I hardly know," smiled Father McGuire. "There are some people who impress the world in that way. They really don't have to do things. It is simply known that, when the time comes, they can do great things. I suppose that it is that way with Andrew Chase."

"I'd like to see how much of a hero he is!" said I, bristling at the thought. For were not my knuckles still sore from the thumping which I had given to his brother?

"Perhaps you will have a chance to find out what sort of a man he is," said Father McGuire, looking fixedly at me. "But I hope not, my boy. I sincerely hope not!"

"Do you think that I would be afraid of him?" said I, on fire.

He waved a hand as though banishing a question which was not to the point. "However," said he, "I am glad that you were able to handle Harry."

"I did that!" said I, with a great grin of satisfaction. "I wish that you had been there to watch!"

"I wish that I had!" said he, with an apparent warmth of gratification.

"He came off his horse and rushed at me like a mad bull!" said I.

"Weren't you a little afraid?"

"Just for a minute—I was. I'd never stood up to any one who came smashing in like that—as though I were nothing, you see. But even if I was rattled, you had put enough sense into my hands and my arms. They took care of me until I woke up and saw that I could manage this big plunging chap well enough."

"You weren't long in getting your confidence!"

"Not long. I tried him with a few straight lefts—your own brand. Well, father, they went through his guard as if he didn't have one! All I had to do after that was to stand away and keep bobbing his head with my left. You would have thought that his face was tied to my fist by a rubber string, they connected so often!"

I laughed with the brutal joy of that recollection, and Father McGuire was seized with a violent fit of coughing which forced him to cover his face with one hand. When he spoke again, he was looking down at the floor, and not at me.

"But didn't he try to close with you, Lee?"

"He did. But—he wasn't even as strong as I am! Oh, yes, he was strong, and he was pretty hot to kill me, you might say. That made him enough to scare the strength out of most people. But I found after a grip or two that he didn't have much weight on me and that I was really a lot stronger than he. Besides, he didn't know the first thing about wrestling. He didn't know a single grip!"

I laughed again, dropping my head far back and letting the chuckle shake me to my very toes.

"When you saw that, he was pretty much at your mercy?" said Father McGuire.

"I begged him not to come in after me," said I. "I knew that I could do anything I wanted with him."

"When did you find that out?" asked Father McGuire.

"Oh, before we'd swung our fists more than two or three times."

"But he wouldn't stop?"

"No. He kept coming in. So I gave him a lesson he won't forget! I tried everything you ever taught me, Father McGuire. I tried jabs in close, and straight punches, and half-arm rips and smashes, and overhand dropping punches that went smashing all the way down his face, and uppercuts short and full arm. I hooked and even swung; and then I hit straight. Oh, it was great!

"I did everything but play for his body; I wanted to leave some strength in him to stand up till the finish—but when I heard the sheriff coming, I knew that I couldn't play with Chase any more. So I tried a full-arm smash at him. You know that driving right that you've taught me, with just a bit of hook at the end of it? I gave him that. You'd of thought that I'd hit him on the back of the head with a mallet, the way he dived into the dust! You'd of laughed, Father McGuire!"

Father McGuire jumped suddenly out of his chair and began to walk up and down the room. It was a great thing to see his nervous, quick steps. I felt that he was fighting the battle through again from beginning to end and rejoicing in having such a fine pupil as I.

Suddenly he said to me: "Go harness the horse to the buggy, Leon."

"Is there anything wrong?" said I.

"I'm too much moved to talk to you about it now," said Father McGuire. "But I want you to go and harness that horse at once. Then bring it around to the front of the house. Hurry, Leon!"

I could see that he was very excited; and what he was excited about had to do with my description of the fight, I had no doubt. However, I knew that it would not be wise to speak to him about it now. I had formed the habit of obedience while I was under his rule.

So I went out to the pasture and called the horse and harnessed it when the good-natured old beast came to my call. In a few minutes I had the buggy and the horse in front of the house. I found that Father McGuire was already waiting at the gate. He climbed into the rig and took the reins.

"Run inside for your hat and your coat," said he.

"Do I go with you?" said I.

"You do," said he. "But now, hurry as fast as you can! This thing that we have to do must be done together."

I did as he directed, and presently we whirled away down the street, and out of the dingy blackness of Mendez to the open plains, where the stars burned twice as low and twice as bright, with a thousand miles of stillness lying on either hand. We jogged on for five miles, and then Father McGuire turned the horse into the lane that led for the new Chase house!

I could not believe it, at first. I turned in the seat and stared down at the erect, square-shouldered outline of the little priest. How familiar that silhouette was, with the head thrusting a little forward, eagerly!

I began to grow afraid. I could never tell what was passing in that brain of his. I really knew him less at the end of eight months' living with him than I had known him at the beginning. What was his purpose now?

He was sufficiently mysterious to me to make me realize that I must make no question of him; and I also realized that whatever he intended must be right. I could not imagine him doing a wrong thing. However, no boy is entirely interested in "right" for its own sake. The end is the thing that the boy has his attention fastened upon, and he does not particularly care about the means to that end.

We stopped at the hitching rack before the house and I, getting down and taking the hitching rope from the back of the buggy, was lost in wonder at the dimensions of the big building.

I had seen it before, when the Carey family lived here. I had even delivered meat at the door. But Mr. Chase had ordered the remodeling of the place on an extensive scale before he came to take up his residence in it. It was three stories, instead of two, and it soared above me like a mountain. It rambled away on either side in wings, either one of which was larger than the biggest house in little Mendez town. Here and there was a lighted window, dotting the great outline of the big place rather than illuminating it.