Читать книгу Jim the Conqueror - Peter B. Kyne - Страница 7

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A SABBATH calm lay upon the hacienda of Don Jaime Miguel Higuenes, lord of the Rancho Valle Verde, notwithstanding the fact that it was not Sunday. The splash of water in a fountain, the occasional chirp of a bird, the faint diapason of insect movement and the occasional complaint of a distant calf lulled, rather than disturbed, the half-formed dreams of the temperamental Don Jaime, where he stretched in a long chair on his cool, red-tiled veranda and gazed out through the arched entrance of his patio toward the distant, blue, serrated hills where the United States of America ended and the Republic of Mexico began. The smoke from a fragrant cigar curled lazily around his dark countenance; from time to time he reached forth to the little table at his side and helped himself to a sip from a highball.

“I wonder,” thought Don Jaime presently, “what is going to become of the Higuenes family.”

The problem proving too much for him, Don Jaime did that which all of his race do with the utmost ease and without preliminary notice. He fell into a gentle slumber. And while he slept a man on a honey-colored horse with a dark stripe running the length of his backbone rode up to the hacienda entrance, dismounted, dropped his reins over his horse’s neck and strode stiffly through the arched entrance and down the flower-bordered gravel walk to the veranda. Observing Don Jaime at peace in the arms of Morpheus, the stranger removed a full cartridge belt, with two pistols, and hung his armament on one of a row of huge spikes driven into the adobe wall of the house. Quietly he drew another chair alongside Don Jaime, disposed his tired body in it, sighed, caught sight of Don Jaime’s highball, which was at least three-quarters present, helped himself to it and drank slowly and with much appreciation.

“By God!” he murmured, setting down the tall glass. “That’s good liquor.”

“You bet your sweet life that’s good liquor,” Don Jaime murmured, without troubling to open his eyes. “Who the devil are you?”

“Wake up, you lazy greaser, and see,” the visitor retorted.

“Now that you speak in your naturally loud, vulgar and irreverent tone of voice I recognize you. I do not have to look.” Don Jaime spoke perfect English, but the faintest clipped accent denoted it was not his mother tongue. He added in Spanish: “Welcome to my poor house. It is yours, gringo.”

“I don’t want your poor house. All I desire is accommodation and food for my horse and myself until morning and—”

“Thou graceless one!” Don Jaime murmured drowsily but without offense. “But what else can one expect of a Texan—and particularly a Texas ranger?”

“I have never been invited to your poor house,” the visitor complained. “I just come anyhow, and of course, once I’m here, you put the best face possible on the matter and bid me welcome. Besides I’m not a Texan. I’m a Californian, and in California we have a habit of asking a thirsty man if he has a mouth. Don’t tell me, Jimmy, that I’ve finished the last of your pre-war Scotch.”

“You have. You finished it three years ago, you ungrateful animal,” Don Jaime retorted, adverting again to English. “And that highball which you have just pinched from me while I slept is Irish, not Scotch, and reached this country via Mexico. Irish whisky, I find, is not as changeable as the Irish. In the national rush for Scotch, Irish has been forgotten save by those few discerning individuals who still entertain a lingering respect for their viscera. Kai, Flavio!”

Bare feet pattered down the hall from the interior of the hacienda. An ancient peon, with just sufficient Castilian blood mingling with the Aztec to arch the bridge of his nose, appeared in the doorway, looked, and disappeared immediately. Presently, he returned with a full bottle, an old silver bucket filled with ice, a bottle of soda and another glass, a box of cigars. The visitor laughed pleasantly.

“Flavio requires no orders when he sees me on the premises, Jimmy. Any time I stop here he knows I’ve ridden a hard twenty miles and am tired and thirsty and need a generous pick-up.”

“He knows the capacity of Ken Hobart, at any rate.” Don Jaime roused and poured a peg for his guest, then helped himself to one. “Indeed, Ken,” he assured Hobart, “you are doubly welcome, because you spare me the unspeakable depravity of drinking alone.... No, don’t worry about the horse. Flavio will send a boy to care for him, and your bath will be ready in an hour. What brings you here?”

“A desire to be neighborly and to offer a slight return for your many evidences of princely hospitality—that and a natural desire to enjoy it again. Since when did you go into the sheep business, Jimmy?”

Don Jaime’s dark eyes opened widely and the hint of an ever-ready smile faded from his handsome features, leaving them unbelievably stern. “Where?” he demanded.

“About ten miles south of here. I came across country from San Ysidro and bumped into them on your range. About forty thousand of them, I should say, although I’m no judge of sheep in quantity. There was a camp in a cottonwood grove in a little green valley some two miles farther on. Two men came out and looked at me as if I wouldn’t be welcome, so I rode on. I judged the sheep might not be yours. The brand is Circle A.”

“Tom Antrim’s outfit. Well, if he’s only ten miles from here he’s trespassing on my range. Thanks for the information, Ken. Feed is pretty scarce to the east of me and I suppose Tom Antrim got desperate. Yes, you have your uses, gringo.”

“If you care to run into Los Algodones and swear to a warrant charging him and John Doe and Richard Roe and James Black and Thomas Green and say a dozen other off-color gents with trespassing, I’ll pick those boys up and lodge them in the juzgado; then you and your boys can run the sheep off in peace.”

“I don’t want to run them off in peace, Ken,” Don Jaime replied languidly. “I’ve done that before and it doesn’t work. They always come back. Sure you haven’t got some other work to do tomorrow?”

“Now, look here, Jimmy,” the ranger protested, “you listen to me. Tom Antrim’s there to stay. So I’m going to hang around the neighborhood. He’s got twenty herders with him and I noticed they all carried rifles. ... Well, here’s mud in your eye.”

They drank to each other. “A man’s house is his castle,” said Don Jaime contemplatively, “and I presume that principle applies to the lands contiguous thereto. One has a right to defend his castle from unwarranted trespass, and I’m here to tell you, old keed, I am very weary of this Tom Antrim and his sheeps—I mean sheep. Damn it, will I never get over the habit of slipping on my plurals, like any Mexican! Three weeks ago the sheriff of this county arrested Tom Antrim and held him and his men long enough to permit me to drive his sheep off my range; and before I called the sheriff in I talked with Tom Antrim. I told him he must not come back again, because eef—I mean if—he did”—here Don Jaime shrugged eloquent shoulders—“well, I would not bother the sheriff to fight for my rights for me. No, by Santa María la Purísima! It is in the blood of the Higuenes family to fight their own fights.”

“Yes, and enjoy them, too.”

“We fight in the open,” Don Jaime assured him.

“I never said you had any Indian blood in your veins, did I?”

Don Jaime laughed. “I must have the figs in my garden picked,” he declared. “The birds are gathering for the feast. Of course the mocking-birds roost in my fig trees and sing sweet songs to me, but the little rascals are too greedy.”

“Don’t try to switch the conversation,” the ranger protested. “From sheep to figs is a jump from the ridiculous to the sublime. I heard all about the famous defi of yours to old Antrim, and I happen to know the old skunk don’t take orders worth a cent. Yet, he knows you mean business. That’s why his men are all armed. He expects a battle and he knows you’ll lead your forces. Now, if you should get killed in the fracas, your executor would be the one to protest against his trespassing in the future. Who might your executor be?”

“The Federal Trust Company of El Paso.”

“Tom Antrim owes them a lot of money. In a dry year they might not be too anxious to discover that Antrim was invading your range—that is, not until they had gotten their money out of the old hog. Now I like you, Jimmy, and I don’t want to see you get killed. Besides, if you kick up a row and don’t get yourself killed, you make work for me and my men. Myself, I’m a man of peace. Consequently it occurred to me—”

“You want me to give him another chance—to appear weak and vacillating by talking to that Antrim again?” Don Jaime charged instantly.

“Thank God, my blood is the cool blood of an Anglo-Saxon ancestry. If I had your hot corpuscles, Friend Jimmy, I never would have risen to be a captain in the Texas rangers. I’d have been killed as a private. Now, you listen to me, because I have no interest at all in Antrim. I have, however, a sympathetic interest in you and your broad acres. You plan to go over yonder and start something. All wrong, old son, all wrong. You take a ranger’s advice and let the other fellow draw first. Then beat him to the draw. While that policy is highly dangerous to a dull man, it is the safest for a man who knows how to draw in a hurry and shoot straight. It puts the burden of guilt on the enemy and he and not you usually gets the flowers. Jimmy, knowing the impetuosity of your nature, I have ridden over here to stop you from doing something inartistic.”

“You are always my good friend,” murmured Don Jaime gratefully.

“Now, listen, Jimmy,” Ken Hobart continued. “Tomorrow I shall make it my business to drop in at that sheep camp for luncheon. A little later you will ride up, alone and unarmed. I’ll report to Antrim that you’re bent on an argument, but not in the smoke; and he’ll go out to talk to you, because I shall advise it strongly. When he does you give him final warning in language most becoming to a hidalgo of your proud ancestry. He’ll think you’re weak and afraid and of course he’ll disregard the warning....

“Well, having warned him, you ride back home, gather your gang together and take possession of the water-holes where Antrim must, of necessity, water his sheep tonight. Don’t let him water them. He’ll fight for the water, rather than back-track with his flock over ground that’s been eaten over, only to find your men guarding the water-holes in that direction, too. A sheep can’t stand such hardship, and three days without water will see his sheep dying by the thousand.

“You understand me, Jimmy? You provoke the fight but he shoots first. Then you clean up and clean up good, because that’s the only way you’re ever going to have peace. Antrim’s fate will be a lesson to any other grass thief with designs on your range—and I don’t think any jury in this county will convict you of murder, because Antrim and his men will have been clearly outside the law, you have a record for patient forbearance in the past, and I will be your witness to prove that you rode up to Antrim’s camp unarmed and talked to him like a gentleman—sabe usted, amigo mío? A captain of rangers’ testimony carries weight with a jury. Anyhow, it just isn’t possible to convict a Higuenes in his county. You have never killed anybody or invaded another’s rights—and that old buzzard, Antrim, has never done anything else but.”

“You are always,” Don Jaime Miguel Higuenes reiterated, “my very good friend. And you are as wise as a treeful of owls. You plot with all the consummate craft of my own people.”

“Where the devil do you suppose I got my education, if not along the Rio Grande?” Ken Hobart retorted. He lit a cigar and looked out over the pleasant garden. “Gosh, you’ve got a nice place here, Jimmy. I wish I’d been as discriminating in the selection of my ancestors as you were.”

Don Jaime laughed lightly. “Only a little while ago I was reflecting that I have not had opportunity to practice the discrimination evinced by my ancestors in the picking of wives, Friend Hobart,” he replied. “If you would be lord of a rancho marry a lady who has one and doesn’t know what to do with it. Fortunately, I possess thees—I mean this—rancho, so I do not need the lady!”

“If you did, Jimmy, where the devil would you find her?”

“You have the delightful habit of placing your finger on the weak spots, my friend. Where, indeed, would I find a suitable wife? I am too busy with thees—I mean this—ranch, and when, once or twice a year I wander to the fleshpots it is to be filled with amazement and fear of what would happen to me if I marry a modern girl.”

“You have all of a Castilian’s horror of a woman who believes she can take as good care of herself as any man can. I suppose you want a girl who will consent to dwell behind bars, take no exercise and stand for a fat old duenna tagging around behind her, not to see that she avoids romance but to make certain she doesn’t act natural and seek it.”

“You are wrong, my friend. I am quite modern but a bit old-fashioned, too. I have been in love many times but only in love with love. I must think long and carefully before asking any woman to share this life with me. Here, she would be lonely. She would look from this hacienda to the horizon and see—cattle. She would look back and see—me. One grows weary of scenery. She would come to regard me as a jailer, not a husband. So I must be careful.”

“Well, when you meet the girl you truly fall desperately in love with, and she reciprocates your passion—”

“She,” quoth Don Jaime Miguel Higuenes solemnly, “shall be the mother of my children.”

“Where? Here?”

“Where she will, my friend,” Don Jaime replied with simple sincerity.

“Then, Jimmy,” said Ken Hobart, “I hope, for purely selfish reasons, you’ll meet your fate before long and that she’ll refuse to marry you until you sell this ranch and move to Houston or Dallas or San Antone or—”

“The Higuenes men do not take orders from women,” Don Jaime interrupted. “And this rancho will never be sold. Four generations of my family have owned it and fought for it. I love it.”

“Well, if she asks it, you’ll buy her a town house and live there with her part of the year, will you not?”

“Asking is not ordering or delivering ultimatums—”

“Ultimata, Jimmy,” the ranger corrected him, mischievously.

“At any rate,” Don Jaime resumed, declining the argument, “it would be a delight to be led but hell to be driven.”

“Well, when some girl starts leading you, you’ll need a good manager for this ranch, Jimmy. I’m growing weary of the reckless, modestly paid life of a ranger ... at least I could be depended on to keep this range free of sheep.”

“There are also bandits from below the Border who raid my cattle. The cemetery of the Rancho Valle Verde has grown fast of late years.”

“Border fighting is right up my alley, James, old son.”

“As a ranger you fight with the law behind you. You start with a moral victory. But as manager of this ranch, which God placed too close to the Rio Grande for comfort, you would have to be very careful. It is better to be the head of a mouse than the tail of a lion. However, Friend Ken, if the time should come for me to tie myself to a girl’s apron-strings I shall send for you.”

Don Jaime lifted from the floor beside his chair a copy of a pretentious magazine devoted to country life in America. “Here is a photograph of a girl,” he said, turning the pages indolently, “whose face and figure would cast a halo over Texas. Now, if she were as good and sweet and womanly as she is beautiful—‘Miss Roberta Antrim,’ ” he interrupted himself to read from the caption, “ ‘one of the enthusiastic members of the Westchester County Hunt, mounted on her crack hunter Croppy Boy.’ Must be an Irish hunter,” Don Jaime opined. “Look at that, Ken, and see if you can work up a cheer or two.”

The ranger studied the page casually. “Well, why don’t you pull out for Westchester County, New York, secure an introduction to her and see if she’s too good to be true or otherwise? At least you’d start with one advantage. She was still unmarried when this magazine went to press.”

“One Antrim at a time, Ken. When I’ve disposed of Tom it will be time to dream of having a look at Roberta.”

“You aren’t afraid they’re related, are you?”

Don Jaime favored his guest with a withering glance. “A man named Jim Hobart was hanged at Austin last week,” he retorted. “Was he a relative of yours—this train robber and murderer?”

“Yes,” Ken Hobart answered evenly, “he was my half-brother. And I tracked him and captured him. A black sheep will crop out in the best of regulated families, you know.”

Don Jaime’s hand caressed that of his friend. “I did not know. I am sorry, my friend.”

Ken Hobart turned bleak eyes upon his host. “I want to quit the rangers, Don Jimmy. I wasn’t jesting when I said I’d like to be the manager of Rancho Valle Verde if you should ever need me.”

“You are the man I have been seeking, Ken. When you reach town tomorrow wire your resignation to the governor of Texas, and as soon as you are released return here.”

“Hope you’ll be here when I arrive, Jimmy. You’ve got to fight that Antrim outfit, and when you do, for the Lord’s sake be careful. I really want this job.”

“If I am still here you will be assistant general manager. If I am not here you will be general manager—and executor of my estate. I will make a new will tonight. Your salary will never be less than the one you enjoy at present. Write your own ticket,” he added, with a touch of the tremendous prodigality of his Castilian blood—a prodigality developed to an excess growth doubtless, because of the tremendous inconsequence of his rugged environment.

“Thank you, Don Jaime.” Never again would Ken Hobart address his friend as Jimmy, and Don Jaime, realizing this, offered no protest, since to him, to the hacienda born, lord of a million acres and sixty thousand head of cattle, this was as it should be.

“I think,” said Don Jaime Miguel Higuenes presently, “that I must start now to pick those figs. The birds are raising the devil with the ripe ones. My great-grandfather planted those figs,” he added, with just a touch of pride. “I have been thinking it would be a very great shame if I departed this world leaving none of my line to care for them.... Well, now that I shall be tied to this ranch no longer I suppose I must look around....”

He strolled away under the fig trees.... To weary, sleepy Ken Hobart there came presently, as from a great distance, the flutelike tones of Don Jaime’s whistling; he trilled a mournful waltz that had been composed five hundred years before, inspired by the exit of the Moors from Granada.

“That boy and a gringo flapper would get along together as comfortably as two tom-cats tied tail to tail and thrown over a clothes-line,” the ranger decided. “Guess I’ll have time for a siesta before Flavio draws my bath. Hum-m-m! Strolling around his old-fashioned garden, picking ripe figs and dreaming of his proud ancestors and his duty to posterity. And within forty-eight hours there’s at least a fifty per cent chance he’ll be dead! Good lad! He’s one of the last survivors of a fast disappearing race.... Guess I’ll have to arrange to be present at the battle of the water-holes, even though I may shoot myself out of a good job as general manager of Rancho Valle Verde.... What’s the odds? I’ll let the tail go with the hide.... Tom Antrim’s got to go!”