Читать книгу The Enchanted Hill (Western Novel) - Peter B. Kyne - Страница 6

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The first shafts of dawn light, escaping over the mountains to the east, descended into Lee Purdy’s patio and thence into Gail Ormsby’s room, awakening her. For several minutes she lay in that pleasant state of mental and physical detachment which succeeds a night of perfect rest and precedes the direful necessity of arising to face another day of existence.

Presently she was aware of stealthy footsteps passing along the veranda; then she heard a soft rap, three times repeated, on a door, and a voice said guardedly:

“Señor!”

Purdy’s voice answered sharply in Spanish: “Quién es?”

“Ramon, señor.”

“Entra, Ramon.” A silence, save for the closing of a door. Then: “Hello, Chan, you crazy Chinaman! I’ve been expecting you two. I found your place in Arguello looking like a mad elephant had been through it. And I found the chuck wagon intact, Ramon. Jesus Ortega is driving it back to the ranch. Sit down, Chan, and tell me all about it. Speak softly,” he added, lowering his own voice.

Thereafter for a few minutes Gail could barely hear the subdued murmur of their talk, then Lee Purdy’s voice rose clear and commanding:

“They will, will they? Like hell, they will! Ramon, tell Tommy Scaife to come here immediately. Then you and Chan arm yourselves. Don’t worry, Chan. There’s only one man on La Cuesta Encantada who owns the lynching concession, and that’s Lee Purdy. They’ve treed the wrong varmint.” There was a harsh note of anger, of impatience in his tones, but he conquered his displeasure and again his voice died away to an indistinguishable murmur, followed by footsteps that padded swiftly along the veranda and apparently out through a gate in the rear wall.

Gail Ormsby dressed hurriedly; then she too crept quietly along the veranda, through the hall and out onto the porte-cochère. Lee Purdy’s automobile, with her trunk in the tonneau, still stood there, and on the front veranda her host stood with a pair of field-glasses to his eyes, gazing down into a world that seemed to swim far below them in an amethyst haze.

And now the girl realized why the Purdys had named their home La Cuesta Encantada. It was perched on the crest of a hill perhaps two thousand feet above the surrounding country. To the southeast and sweeping in a vast arc to the northwest lay a vast plain, a semi-desert, in which the night shadows still lingered; from this rapidly lifting shadow a white streak that was the road to Arguello came out of the foreground, while far across the plain the dawn light was painting with crimson and gold the crests of the mountains that hemmed in El Valle de los Ojos Negros and were first to receive the caress of the new day. Gail Ormsby had seen El Valle de los Ojos Negros in mid-afternoon and knew it for a harsh, unlovely and lonely land, but now it had been touched by a magical beauty. The lingering night shadows and the dawn mist mercifully hid the crass reality of it; it seemed unreal, phantasmagoric, beautiful with a frail and gossamer beauty.

To the north and northeast the hills were blurred with timber, back of which rose three jagged peaks, snow-covered, crimson as blood with the upflung rays of a sun that was not yet in sight. Up from the lowlands, that magnificent empire, came the aroma of dawn, the incense released when dewdrops disappear in vapor and flowers and scented shrubs awaken and inhale the light of life. From afar on the Enchanted Hill cock quails called their families forth to their faring; a coyote saluted the sun with a final shrill cheer and a Shamo Indian thrush, the Caruso of birds, stirred in his cage under the porte-cochère and burbled and trilled his joyous matin. Seemingly he too realized, with Gail Ormsby, that here indeed was the Enchanted Hill.

Lee Purdy lowered his glasses and for the first time observed his guest. “Good morning, Miss Ormsby,” he saluted her. “I’m glad you are up in time to catch the motif that inspired Hallie to call our home La Cuesta Encantada.” He swept his arm in a wide circle. “You’ll travel far before your heart will thrill again to beauty such as that. And I own it! I own everything to the tops of those mountains yonder and up to the forest reserve. I’m land-poor and financially harassed, but—I own that, and I love it and I’m happy. Let others thumb their greasy ledgers and clip their coupons and inhale the fumes of gasoline in cramped towns, but I will none of it. I like fresh air and to rise in the morning and look at my empire.”

“I understand, Mr. Purdy. But do you usually look at it through field-glasses? I find my poor eyes quite sufficient for the assimilation of this beauty.”

He glanced at her suspiciously.

“Your conference with Ramon and the Chinaman awakened me,” she explained. “Is a mob from Arguello coming to lynch Chan?”

He nodded. “They’re down in the valley now—six automobiles loaded with some human beings who think they’re men. But they’re not going to lynch Chan.”

“How do you know they are not?” she demanded.

The little whimsical smile she had observed the day before and liked so much went questing over his face.

“This is my castle and I’m King of it,” he replied. “And I know how to be King of a castle.”

Lee Purdy thoughtfully replaced his field-glasses in their leather case; with the buckling down of the lid one would have thought that the drama that impended was already a closed incident. With an encompassing wave of his hand toward the horizon, he said, “Well, that is New Mexico.”

“One should never weary of that view, Mr. Purdy.”

“I know one who does not. That scene below always soothes me when I am not particularly happy.”

“You are not of the Southwest,” Gail challenged suddenly.

“No, I am not.”

A silence. Why did he not tell her the name of the land he had been reared in? “Your choice of words and the manner of their pronunciation are slightly foreign——”

“I am not an English remittance man,” he interrupted.

“I didn’t say you were.”

“You thought it, which is quite as uncomplimentary. I came out here to please myself, not my family, and I pay as I go—with my own money. I’m a Yankee.”

“Oh! Boston!”

“Yes—complicated with Worcester, Massachusetts, and the inherited linguistic and literary traditions of the Purdy tribe—Longfellow, Emerson, William Dean Howells and the Boston Transcript.”

Her silvery laugh tinkled pleasantly upon his ears once more. “And with six automobiles approaching, loaded with men intent upon lynching a Chinaman who is at once a friend and a guest of yours, you haven’t found sufficient provocation to swear! Aren’t you going to take some measures to make good on your statement of a few moments ago that there isn’t going to be any lynching?”

“I’m not worried about those boys, Miss Ormsby. I wouldn’t spoil this frolic for anything. I’m going to enjoy it.”

“But a mob is a very dangerous thing, Mr. Purdy.”

“Only for people who persist in believing that myth, Miss Ormsby. A mob without capable leadership is like an army that attacks without a purposeful plan. Let us not disturb ourselves over the gentlemen from Arguello. When they arrive they will be taken care of nicely. Meanwhile we’re up unusually early and it will be an hour before breakfast is ready in the house, although the ranch cook will be serving a few hands in about ten minutes. Would you care to walk up to the mess hall and have a cup of coffee now?”

“Thanks, no. I’m much too nervous to think of drinking coffee now.”

“I’m not.”

“Where is your Chinese friend?”

“In his natural element—the ranch kitchen—chattering pleasantly with Joaquin, my cook. I suggest that the best place to see this show is the place where the principal performer is to be found. We have nothing but scenery here.”

“Very well, I’ll go,” the girl answered tremulously. “Do you think there’ll be any bloodshed?”

“I don’t know. I hope not. If there should be, it will not be any of ours. I view the shedding of my blood with the same horror that you would view the shedding of your hair.”

They walked around the house and along a path lined with ragged robins, winding through a grove of scattered oaks. Under one of these about two hundred yards from the ranch-house stood a low frame building—a combination kitchen and mess hall. At a little distance was the bunk-house. A small Chinaman about thirty years of age stood at the screen door and held it open to admit Purdy and the girl. His slant eyes were solemn and anxious, but he said nothing. Gail glanced down the long table and saw places set for twenty-five.

“I had no idea you employed so many men, Mr. Purdy.”

“I do not. Ten men is my limit, even in the busy season. Those places are set for our guests who are so shortly to arrive.”

Gail Ormsby stared at her host, amazed. “Do you mean to tell me you are going to give those beasts breakfast?”

“Certainly. It’s the custom in this country. One feeds everybody arriving at meal-time, and without questioning his age, color, creed or previous condition of servitude. Are you quite sure you’ll not have a cup of coffee?”

She shook her head, so Purdy accepted a cup of coffee which Chan brought at his request. He sipped it with evident enjoyment and was about to order another when Joaquin called from the kitchen that the guests had arrived. Instantly Purdy rose and opened a door which led into another room at the side of the hall.

“This is the commissary,” he explained. “You can hear every word spoken in the mess hall and if your curiosity gets the better of you, here is a small knot-hole in the door. It affords an unobstructed view of our guests.”

He thrust her gently within and closed the door. The girl found a seat on a sack of potatoes and nervously awaited the next move of this extraordinary transplanted New Englander.