Читать книгу The Comancheros - Paul Iselin Wellman - Страница 13

Intense silence, broken only by the drip on the floor from the leak in the roof. Houston was the first to stir. He raised his eyes and they fell on Regret. The sight seemed to recall him from his terrible abstraction.

“You! Can you prove you didn’t kill Emile Beaubien?” he said almost savagely.

Regret suddenly remembered his own peril. At the same time his growing hope faded. Furnish such a proof—how could he?

“Only what I said before——” he faltered.

“A man who can know with certainty where his lead will strike in the tense moment of the word for fire must be able to display a skill with weapons more than common!” Houston growled.

He pulled open a drawer in the table and from it took one of the new revolvers of the Colt model, such as had become very popular in Texas during the last two years. This was an extraordinary weapon, silver-mounted, chased, with a handle of pearl. Even in his agitation Regret eyed it lovingly. The Colt revolver, although an invention newly perfected, was familiar to those who practiced arms at the Salle St. Philippe in New Orleans, and he had some knowledge of its possibilities.

“Given me by Sam Colt himself,” rumbled Houston. “Gentlemen, if you’ll be so good, follow me.”

Through a rear door they passed out to the open but roofed passage on which the president had been shaving. Rain still fell dismally, but from the back wing of the log edifice Regret heard the sound of a piano played not unskillfully.

“That’s Mrs. Houston,” said His Excellency. “Her piano is one of her few refuges in this somewhat primitive land. It is,” he added, “the only one west of the Brazos.” He began to glance keenly about. “What kind of a target do you like? A cross? A circle?”

At this talk of shooting, confidence flowed back into Regret.

“What distance, monsieur?” he asked.

“That hackberry? It’s fifty paces.”

“You offer me a target like that? By your leave, it’s child’s play.”

“Then what do you suggest?”

Regret looked around. On a rough plank table lay a heap of miscellany, including rusty spurs, a few tools, a broken snaffle, a saddle skirt, and a small pail half filled with lead musket balls, such as were used in trade with the Indians. Stepping over, conscious of their puzzled looks, he selected one of the balls.

“Your knife,” he said to Gatling.

The Ranger glanced at Houston, who nodded; then drew from its sheath the long-bladed bowie knife and handed it over, though with obvious suspicion.

Quickly Regret cut two slivers on opposite sides of the round bullet, leaving them attached so that he could bend them down over a piece of string, thus fastening it to the leaden ball. With a mocking bow, he returned the knife to its owner, and taking his contraption to the dripping eaves which sloped conveniently low at the side of the passage, fastened the loose end of the string there so that the bullet dangled three feet or so below. Having accomplished this, with a push of his finger he set the ball swinging back and forth like a pendulum.

“That,” said he, stepping to the opposite side of the porch, a distance of twenty feet, “might perhaps be considered some slight challenge to a marksman. Will you try it?” He bowed again to Gatling.

The Ranger stared. “Hit that swingin’ bullet? It’s crazy!”

“I had heard,” Regret said icily, “that Texas Rangers are very adept with weapons and willing to accept any challenge.”

“Go ahead, Tom,” Houston grinned. “Teach him a lesson.”

Gatling did not like it, but he stepped back to the edge of the porch, drew his revolver, and after aiming back and forth, following the bullet’s swing, fired. The musket ball continued its pendulum motion untouched. Again he fired. Again he missed.

Regret noticed that the piano inside the house had ceased playing.

“By the Eternal!” exclaimed Houston. “I’ll have a try at that myself!” With his own silver-and-pearl revolver, he fired twice. The pendulum did not even hesitate in its rhythm.

He handed the weapon to Regret. “You actually propose to hit that musket ball?” he demanded.

“I’ll try to do something slightly more difficult, Your Excellency—cut the string above it!”

“Impossible!”

“Perhaps. But I’ll at least try.”

Raising the revolver, he fired. The trick was possible—with a little luck—if one could shoot. They used to practice it for sport in the gallery at the Salle St. Philippe, although it was admitted there that Regret was the only one who had much success with it. There is an instant at the end of the pendulum’s swing when bullet and cord are motionless before starting in the opposite direction.

The lead from the revolver cut the string and the falling musket ball bounced off the porch.

Houston stared with almost ludicrous astonishment. But the Ranger’s face showed quick disbelief.

“Luck!” he said. “He can’t do it again!”

“I think he can,” said Houston. “Try it again, Regret.”

As has been mentioned, there is necessarily an element of luck in all such shots, and Regret had been congratulating himself on bringing it off. To be expected to duplicate it—on order—was, he felt, rather too much.

There was, however, no way of avoiding it. With misgivings he took his position while the musket ball was suspended and once more set swinging. But as he raised the revolver, the door to the rear wing of the house flew open, and a woman stepped out.

She was tall, quite young, and the look of strong displeasure on her face did not hide the fact that she was pretty.

“Sam Houston!” she cried, in a voice both sharp and petulant. “How often do I have to tell you that the porch of this house is no place for your artillery practice!”

“Margaret, my love!” exclaimed the president, with an expression on his vast visage exactly like a small boy caught stealing jam.

“Grown men!” she continued bitterly. “Indulging in such childish horseplay! Waking the baby and startling me nearly out of my wits——”

“We were only——”

“I’ll have no excuses, sir! If Sam Junior grows up to be one of those awful people who twitch out of nervousness, you’ll have only yourself to thank! Now take your—your cannons—and these men—and go away!”

The gigantic president bowed in a manner most humble. “Thy wish is ever Houston’s command,” he said meekly, and led a hasty retreat.

In his office he gazed at them with an uneasy hint of embarrassment. “I trust you gentlemen will—ah—pardon Mrs. Houston,” he said. “She’s the soul of sweetness and dutiful obedience. But she does fire up a little when she gets rattled——” He hesitated sheepishly. “After all, gun-fire is a bit rich, I suppose, for the blood of a teething infant——”

He cleared his throat and hastened to change the subject. “Well, we have business, don’t we? I must say, Regret, that it goes against my grain to waste on the gallows a man who can shoot as you can.”

“In that case, Your Excellency——”

“But there’s a problem.” Houston ruminated. “A request for extradition from a friendly government—it’s awkward to refuse it. If you were a citizen of Texas, now—but naturalization requires months.” Suddenly his eye lit. “I have it! If I enlist you in the Rangers—it will make you a citizen automatically and instantly!” He paused at Gatling’s scowl. “You have some rebuttal, Tom?”

The Ranger spoke freely. “This jaybird ain’t got the makin’s of a Ranger, Gen’ral!”

“He can shoot.”

“Mebbe. But there’s a lot beside shootin’. A Comanche warrior’s a thought different in handlin’ from a Creole gal. An’ it’s a leetle harder ridin’ after outlaws than makin’ a figger in a cotillion.”

“Never imagine,” said Regret, “that I can’t do anything you can—and better—my horse-faced friend!”

The “horse-faced,” admittedly, was not courteous. But then neither was the “jaybird.” Again the men locked glances, and the hard dislike grew in both pairs of eyes.

“Well, Regret?” said Houston.

Regret hesitated. With the greatest force it came over him that he had no desire to be a Texas Ranger. The life of those people was hard and dangerous, and he had other plans.

“Yes, or no?” Houston asked sharply.

The Rangers ... or the gallows? There really was no choice.

“Yes, Your Excellency,” said Regret.

“One leetle thing,” said Gatling, with the cunning expression of a man who has just thought of an unanswerable objection. “A Ranger has to have a certificate of character.”

Houston grunted. “That’s true. I’d forgot. Yes, he must have a recommendation, surely, and this man might find it difficult to get one. Well, perhaps we’ll have to ship him back to New Orleans after all——”

Suddenly Regret spoke, greatly daring. “I count on the highest of recommendations, Your Excellency——”

“Whose?”

“Yours!”

For a moment Houston stared as if he did not believe his ears. Then he fetched Gatling a great clap on the back and laughed like a hyena.