Читать книгу Stampede - Stewart Edward White - Страница 5
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A fat and rather untidy man sat in a boxlike office in the second story of a building near Portsmouth Square. In those days that was not far from the water front, and the man could look directly out to the Bay where lay, rotting at their chains, scores of wooden vessels, deserted by their crews for the gold rush of ’49, and since superseded by the faster clippers made necessary by the shifts of trade. He sprawled back in his chair, his booted feet on the flat desk, his black wide hat over his eyes. In his mouth was an unlighted cigar which he revolved methodically with his teeth and tongue. The end of the cigar had become frayed in the process. Every so often the man removed it momentarily to blow forth at random small wet pieces of tobacco that had become detached.
He was alone in the room, which was small and ostentatiously plain both in ornament and furnishing: a pine box, carpeted with coco matting; a few shelves of lawbooks; another, less comfortable, chair; and a spittoon. This crudeness was unnecessary, a pose; for San Francisco was some years out of its swaddling clothes, and Jake Conger’s fortune by now was tidily on toward the seven figures.
Jake continued to stare at the abandoned ships. After a time, absent-mindedly, he struck a match and applied the flame to the end of the cigar. Only with some difficulty, and considerable mechanical ingenuity, did he manage to get the poor demoralized thing going. He persisted patiently, though a half-dozen fresh cheroots peeped from his vest pocket.
Behind him the door opened and closed.
“Hullo?” said Jake Conger inquiringly, but without bothering to turn his head.
“Jake!” cried an amused voice on a note of false alarm, “your chewing tobacco’s on fire!”
The fat man withdrew his booted feet from the desk top, swiveled about to face his visitor. The latter was as slender as the other was fat; as spick and span as the other was untidy; a man perhaps rising fifty, but with the fresh skin and snapping live eyes of youth. He was dressed in the height of one of the half-score of fashions affected by the San Francisco of that day: a high flaring collar above a wide bow stock; a low-cut waistcoat; an ample blue coat with a wide rolled collar and tails behind; tight-fitting striped pantaloons strapped beneath the insteps of varnished boots. In one hand he skillfully carried a polished cane, a pair of gloves, and a tall hat. A roach of upstanding white hair alone gave him his proper age.
Jake Conger’s shrewd eyes half closed, but he showed no other indication of surprise. With one foot he dextrously spun the vacant chair toward his visitor, and at the same time, as though with the same motion, he produced more cigars, but from an inside pocket.
“Set! Smoke!” he invited curtly.
The newcomer spread his tails, seated himself, laid aside his hat and stick.
“Yours, or political?” he inquired, examining the cigars.
“Mine,” said Conger. He touched his outside pocket. “Political,” he added, “next my heart, always, Braidwood.”
“In that case——” accepted the visitor. He puffed for a moment until the cheroot was well alight. “You seemed busy when I came in.”
“I was looking at them ships,” said the fat man with sudden and surprising animation, as though he had just awakened, “and figgering. Seems like they ought to be good for something. A man could get ’em cheap: for nothing, practically.”
“You might pass a law,” suggested the visitor blandly, “turn ’em into prison ships, like the old Euphemia. You’ll have enough jailbirds to fill ’em all if things go on as they are. But look here, Jake, I didn’t come in to waste your time. I want you to do me a favor.”
“I thought likely,” grunted Conger, but not unamiably. “Let’s hear it.”
“I want a job.”
“A job!” repeated Jake, after an instant of blank incredulity. “F’r you? A job? What are you talking about?”
“Not for me,” laughed Braidwood, “for someone else. And it has to be an especial sort of job. That’s why I came to you. There’s nothing in it—for anybody,” he added at Conger’s expression, then laughed. “I’ll tell you about it,” he suggested.
“So do,” grumbled Conger. The cigar began again its methodical revolution, the movement imperiling the integrity of the ash, which had grown to an inch or more in length. “Permit me,” said Braidwood. He whisked an ash tray from the desk, held it beneath the end of the cheroot which he delicately flicked with the nail of his little finger. Conger grunted. “Do not mention it,” said the visitor.
2
“It is for my nephew,” Braidwood began his explanation.
“Didn’t know you had one,” growled Conger.
“He has been here but a little over a week. He arrived on the clipper Thunder Bird. I wish to find him suitable occupation.”
“Why don’t you give him a job yourself?” growled Conger. “You ought to have any amount of them.”
“I could; here. But he is pretty young—just twenty—and——”
“No good, eh?” interrupted Conger. “So it’s to be a government job! Well,” he admitted cynically, “don’t know but you’re right.”
“He’s a fine boy,” Braidwood denied heatedly, “and he’s going to make a fine and able man, but——”
“But what?” Jake Conger grinned.
“But he’s young; that’s all: he’s just young, and this town is bad for him, at least till he gets his feet under him.”
“Twenty’s not so young,” said Conger. “Why, I mind me when I——”
“It isn’t years; it’s age—or rather it’s youth, just sheer youth. Some grow up quicker than others.”
“Say”—Jake leaned forward so suddenly that even his heavy chair protested—“that wasn’t your nephew by any chance that I heerd ’em tellin’ of that got into a row with Yankee Sullivan at the El Dorado a night or so ago?”
Braidwood nodded. Conger removed the wreck of the cigar from his mouth in order to whistle. “Suicidal tendencies, eh?” he remarked dryly.
“Claimed he saw Sullivan slip a card on a Chileño,” said Braidwood.
“So he had to horn in! How did he figger in it, even if ’twas so? And what if it was? Who cares about a Chileño, anyways?”
“I know, I know!” agreed Braidwood with a slight show of impatience. “But that’s just the point. He’s young and he’s green and he’s enthusiastic and he’s come out West just honing for what he calls adventure. You know yourself, Jake, that that is a bad combination the way this town is put together right now. If it hadn’t been for Danny Randall and Diamond Jack, Yankee Sullivan would have killed him the other night.”
“Sure! I heard about that!” Conger contemplated the debris of the cigar with regret, finally cast it accurately into the spittoon. “Well, what is it you want of me?”
“I told you. A job for him. Something away from the city, with some responsibility to it—or at least something that looks responsible. Leslie is nobody’s fool.”
“Ain’t many jobs with dry nurses to ’em,” said Conger dryly.
Braidwood frowned.
“Now don’t get me wrong, Conger,” he said sharply. “The lad is nobody’s fool, and he can take care of himself and he’ll learn fast. But he’s very young and he’s idealistic——”
“Oh, I see your p’int,” the fat man interrupted. He thoughtfully produced another cheroot and stuck it in his mouth. Braidwood watched him.
“He is the son of my youngest sister,” said Braidwood after a little. “I have not seen her since she was a baby, five or six years old. That’s a long time. But I was very fond of her, and she must have been very fond of me and talked of me. At any rate, when she died the boy came straight out here to me. Of course it may have been merely a spirit of adventure—the West, the gold fields. I don’t know.” He was talking more to himself than to Conger.
“Well, I tell you: I got a kind of idea,” said the latter thickly over the obstruction of the cheroot.
“You know the gov’ment is tackling the land business lately, examining titles and adjusting boundaries and the like.” He waved his hand toward the papers that strewed the top of the desk. “Big job. All mixed up.” He chuckled fatly. “Good pickings. Well, I think I could get this boy of yours an appointment as Field Inspector. How’d that be?”
“I don’t know. What is it? What does it amount to?”
“Nothing much. Just takes the grants and plots and checks up on landmarks and boundaries, and so on, and makes a report as to whether everything gees or not.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Well, then mebbe the land is declared public and open for entry, or maybe suit is entered in Federal Courts. It all depends.” Conger grinned reminiscently. “I should say it did depend! You’d better send your boy into a den of grizzly b’ars as up the Valley where the squatters are strong. They make their own land laws and they don’t want no interference—unless it interferes their way. But I was thinking we could send him up past Soledad. There’s a lot of ranchos up there, so far back that nobody even knows they’re there. How’s it strike you?”
Braidwood nodded.
“I knew I could depend on you, Jake. I won’t forget it.”
“I don’t intend you shall,” returned Conger dryly. “That’s all right. Send him around to see me.”
