Читать книгу Ranchero - Stewart Edward White - Страница 11

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Cortilla stirred, groaned, finally sat up. He was dazed, but slowly recollection of events came to him. Andy waited; but his eyes blazed with a cold fury that did not abate.

“Shut up, you miserable little murderer!” he growled in English as Cortilla started to speak.

The naked sword in his hand, he advanced until he stood over the still prostrate man. Cortilla shrank, looked about him wildly.

“To me! To me!” he shouted to his soldiers. “Help! Help! This one murders me!”

The troopers stirred uneasily, but subsided as Andy turned menacingly in their direction. The tall frontiersman thrust the point of the weapon in the ground, stooped, and lifted the smaller man bodily to his feet, putting into the action a half-restrained strength that rattled Cortilla’s teeth in his head. For several seconds Andy stood thus holding him by the collar, deep furrows between his eyes, staring at his squirming and bleating captive, who was now certain his hour was come. Then suddenly he dropped the long rifle, whirled the Mexican about, bent him half double, seized the sword, and with the flat of it proceeded most heartily to spank that worthy, to spank him with the full vigor of the fury that had blazed in his eyes, spanked him until Jesús María Corbedo de Cortilla howled like a schoolboy. It was ridiculous; it was magnificent. Then, as suddenly, he hurled him aside, broke the sword in two pieces, flung the pieces at Cortilla.

“Vamos!” he cried harshly: then, as Cortilla, completely exhausted by the terrible beating, half stunned by the force of the fall, failed to rise, he imperiously motioned the troopers to approach. They hesitated uncertainly, but as Andy again held the long rifle in his hands, they finally—and gingerly—obeyed. Their faces were impassively noncommittal; but, if Andy had been cool enough to observe the fact, they were not wholly able to restrain a certain complacency beneath the surface of their eyes. Provided this madman did not further misbehave, provided that after all they themselves escaped from this astounding episode with whole skins, it would be something that they had seen Jesús María Corbedo de Cortilla spanked. The sight had done much to sweeten the memory of past petty disciplines. And already they were, beneath their grave and correct exteriors, relishing in anticipation certain appreciations by others in the presidio, others who also had memories of past petty disciplines. Life was worth while, after all.

Possibly some such thought occurred to Cortilla also, and sufficed to overcome his immediate fears. He was livid with rage.

“You shall hear of this!” he shrieked. “You have insulted Mexico, the Mexican Army! You shall——”

“Vaya!” Andy cut him short. “It is lucky for you I do not kill. Silence!” he roared, “or I may forget that fact—and there will not be any Mexican Army,” he added with grim humor.

The last remark struck home with the troopers.

“Come, señor lieutenant,” anxiously pleaded one of them, dismounting. He held the stirrup urgently. Cortilla climbed into the saddle, groaning and wincing.

“Vamos!” Andy repeated.

They rode away slowly. When at a considerable distance Cortilla turned in his saddle to shriek imprecations and threats. Andy threw forward the muzzle of his rifle. One of the soldiers leaned forward to grasp the officer’s reins. The horses broke into a shuffling trot. They disappeared through the tall grasses, over the rise.

Andy dropped the butt of his long rifle to the ground, crossed his elbows on it in his typical attitude. For some time he stared into the distance; then roused himself with a sigh. Across the deserts, across the ranges he had made his long and toilsome way, escaping the blood and hatred of the gathering storm. He had not escaped. Here too were hatred and bloodshed. All he wanted was to live in peace, in peace to forget his sorrows, to heal his wounds. There was no peace. He looked about him over the far-flung quietude of the falling day. The sea of grasses bent in long parallel rippling waves beneath the wind. Again the lines of waterfowl cut the sky; But above him swung on slow majestic wing the vultures waiting for him to go. Darkness was gathering over the Lovely Land. The bells of San Gabriel, which had been sounding ever louder in his ears, had suddenly been stricken faint and far away.

“Well,” he addressed himself: with a humorous acquiescent quirk of the lips, “you’ve made a good start, Burnett.”

He mounted, collected his other two animals, and rode on. But now he headed southeast, toward the great valley and the Sierra.