Читать книгу Ranchero - Stewart Edward White - Страница 12

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Andy Burnett was bitterly lonesome. This was not so much physical as psychic. Andy was, in his trapper’s life, quite accustomed to being by himself. But always, even in the remotest solitudes, the warmth of distant companions, to whose company the mere matter of a journey would bring him, glowed as a reality between himself and the chill. Now they were gone. Kelly alone survived of those nearest to him; and Kelly had quit the mountains. In this new land Andy had remembered Padre Sanchez, at the Mission of San Gabriel, where, many years ago, when on an expedition with Jedediah Smith, he had spent some months. After the tragedies at Pierre’s Hole had wiped out the last of his close friends, the young trapper’s mind had turned to a hoped-for peace and healing within sound of the mission bells. And at the very threshold of the new land he had fallen foul of its government. More, he had so outraged the touchy pride of its representative that the latter must make it his business to hunt the young man down, if he could. Not only was Andy barred from the coast lands of civilization; but he must, he knew, have become a sort of outlaw.

That did not worry him. He knew he could maintain himself indefinitely in the great interior valley and the foothills and mountain parks of the Sierra, without the slightest danger of detection by the Spanish. There were plenty of beaver, he remembered: undoubtedly he could, in the proper season, make up a few packs. He could take them up into Oregon, to the Hudson’s Bay post there. Jed Smith had spoken highly of the factor McLaughlin, known as the White Eagle. The fact that that meant near a thousand miles of unknown rough travel through known hostile tribes did not bother him. But Andy was still a mountain man, with the mountain man’s strong prejudices and partisanships. He would as soon work for the Hudson’s Bay Company as for Astor and the American Fur Company—just about as soon. Still, sooner or later, he would have to get fresh ammunition and supplies somewhere. An alternative was to return the way he had come. His whole being turned over in revulsion at the thought. That phase of his life was definitely finished, closed by the searing red hand of massacre. Riding thus, moodily, in a fog of apathy that blotted out the healing beauties thronging on every side to his assuagement, he was, when on the fourth day he encountered three horsemen, almost too indifferent to take the obvious precautions. Almost, but not quite. Long habit nudged him. So he rode directly at them, and brought his horse to a stop at an appropriate distance, and looked them over coolly and appraisingly.

They were unarmed, except that the leader wore a light slim rapier. Obviously not of the military. That, to Andy, was about the only obvious thing about them. Nothing in their appearance or their equipment, as far as he could see, suggested their business—if they had any. His contempt, the contempt of the mountain man for “foofaraw”—unless it might be his own kind of foofaraw—added to his recently acquired misliking of the race. His figure relaxed in his saddle, though his eye did not lose its wariness, nor did his right hand leave the trigger guard of the long rifle that crossed his saddle before him.

No detail escaped the appraisal of his eye, practised in the appraisal of details. And of what he saw he liked nothing. Except the horses. He grudgingly admitted to himself that the horses were fine animals, especially that ridden by the young man with the rapier. It was a spirited-looking beast, a light buckskin in color; but unlike any buckskin Andy had ever seen. The buckskins of the plains had black manes and tails, and a black stripe down the backbone. This one had no such stripe, and its mane and tail, which were long and silky and slightly waved, were of shining silver. Its legs were slender; its hoofs small; its nervously pricking ears fine; its lustrous eyes wide apart; in its distended nostrils the quick blood showed rose. It stepped with a dainty springing touch of the ground, holding its head high, its smooth muscles quivering with a speed eager for release; and yet it moved perfectly in control. Its rider had raised his hand, and it stood, immobile as a statue except for the alert movement forward and back, forward and back, of its ears, and the slow, musical champing of the rollers of its bit.

Nor, though the animals’ trappings smacked decidedly of foofaraw, did Andy withhold his admiration from them. Your wilderness horseman, whatever he may be, whether trapper, plainsman, or cowboy, has always lavished on his mount the love of decoration he stoutly denies to himself. The wide side plates of the bit were inlaid with carved silver; the bridle was of braided rawhide starred with silver conchas. The rawhide reins were tufted along their length with brightly colored tassels of horsehair, and were joined together at the end in a long whip-like morale. Nor was the saddle less gay. Its tree carried a low horn whose top was as broad as a saucer. Over the tree was an all-enveloping apron-like leather, extending forward and back and down the sides, the mochila, the business-foundation of the structure. Over this was another covering, the coraza, also of leather, elaborately ornamented with delicate and graceful carvings in conventional patterns of leaves and flowers, elaborately embroidered with colored silks, with silver, and with gold. Across the front of the saddle a folded poncho. Behind it a sort of second seat, or pillion, the arqueta shaped like a half moon, also of leather, lined with fleece. Silver conchas held each juncture. The stirrups were hooded with carved leather that extended below in two long flapping points almost to the ground, the tapaderos. Only later, of course, did Andy learn the names for these things; but now he saw them all and admired and approved. A coiled rawhide reata, smooth and oiled and supple, hung at the saddlebow.

That is as far as his approval ran. The rider was much, oh, much too foofaraw. Though tall and muscular, he was altogether too handsome, with his clear olive complexion, his tiny moustache, his long-lashed black eyes, his too-red lips, and the affected streak of whisker that extended from his temples to end at the corners of his lips. The mocking smiling animation of his face was too animated, too changeable, too frivolous for Andy, accustomed to the self-contained Indian stolidity of the mountain men.

But the height of silly foofaraw, as Andy saw it then, was the way the man had rigged himself out. The creature wore a stiff low-crowned hat tied under his chin, with a tasseled band about it of braided gold and silver set with green stones. Under it was tied a bright kerchief to cover his hair, which hung down his back in a short queue, like a woman’s or an Indian’s. He had a short collarless jacket trimmed with red, so scant its edges did not meet in front, although it sported two crowded rows of gold buttons. The man’s shirt was frilled. He had wound about his waist a broad red sash, the ends of which hung down his left side. He had on close-fitting knee breeches the bottoms of which were fringed with gold. He wore bright embroidered garters! His boots were of soft leather and were of two colors, yellow and brown. On his heels two pieces of fringed leather supported his silvered spurs, which were enormous, with rowels two inches or more in diameter, and tiny bells against the rowels, and silver chains hanging under the arch of the foot; that jingled musically with every movement. Andy’s nostrils widened with abysmal disdain.

And just to make it complete this—this popinjay—carried on his back, held in place by a broad ribbon, a guitar!

The other two were stolid-faced men, slightly older in years. Their equipment was much the same, except that it was less ornamental, less elaborate, more worn than that of their companion. To a bystander, had there been one, the two groups would have presented an interesting contrast: the tall frontiersman in his worn buckskins, his head bound in a simple bandanna handkerchief, his long rifle across his saddle, bestriding one wiry Indian pony, the other two cropping soberly alongside; and the gayly caparisoned Californians.

The younger man was the first to flash a gay greeting, which Andy barely acknowledged. He was decidedly off the Latin races. Then the stranger, unabashed, wheeled his horse alongside.

“You come from a long way, señor?” he suggested.

Andy grunted assent; then, as the fact belatedly reached his consciousness, he was startled out of his withdrawal. “Where did you learn to speak English?” he demanded bluntly.

“I espeak it well, eh?” acknowledged the young man. “Why not? I am educate in United States. I think,” he added with a laugh, “my family he get tired keeping track of me and send me away to get rid of me. Nevare have I been very popular with my family. Sad, eh?”

Andy grunted. He offered no encouragement to this volatile stranger. Apparently he did not even glance in his direction. Nevertheless, he saw and registered every movement made, not only by his undesired companion, but also by the other two. Andy felt quite competent to take care of himself with double this number of fancy-plumaged jayhawks, but he did not intend to be caught unaware.

The principal jayhawk chattered more like a magpie than a jayhawk, which added to Andy’s contempt. The stranger spoke very good English. Indeed, a broad doubling of the initial S and an occasional inversion of phrase were his chief idiosyncrasies of speech. He told a few unessentials about himself; he commented superfluously on the weather and the surrounding country; he questioned Andy adroitly but without response. Andy had no use for this company and took no pains to conceal that fact. Every few moments the young Californian turned in his saddle to address in Spanish the two vaqueros who followed twenty yards or so behind. These remarks Andy listened to idly, though his impassive face gave no sign that he understood. But soon his attention was more closely enlisted.

“What do you think, Panchito?” said the leader. “Could there be two like him?”

“He is undoubtedly the man of whom we have heard, Don Ramón.”

The Californian glanced at Andy as though to refresh an impression.

“He has not to me the air of one so desperate. Though,” he added with a curl of the lip, “he is an unmannerly pig, surly as a bear.”

“Gracias,” interposed Andy dryly.

Ramón reined in his horse so abruptly that the animal threw its head high. His eyes were dark and flashing with anger, but the suavity of his manner did not alter.

“Ah, you espeak Spanish, señor,” he said in that tongue. “I do not find it courteous that you have concealed that fact! It savors of the spy.”

Andy laughed shortly. His contempt and indifference to the other’s opinion were as obvious as the lash of a whip. The young Californian’s eyes widened slightly, but it was the man Panchito who snarled in anger.

“Shall we take him in, Don Ramón? This is an order to all loyal men—and a reward.”

The long rifle seemed of its own accord to leap from Andy’s saddlebow to point its muzzle not two feet from the Californian’s chest.

“I could kill you,” he said after a moment. “I’d as soon kill you as any of your cowardly kind. But killing is useless.” He slowly dropped the muzzle of his rifle. “I think you’d best ride your way.”

At that instant, swift as the dart of a snake, wham! slap! with such tremendous force as almost to shake him from his saddle, a loop of slender heavy rawhide pinioned his arms to his sides, and wham! slap! another encircled his neck. Such were the speed and the force of the shock that the long rifle was jarred from his grasp.

So unexpectedly and swiftly did these things happen that for a moment Andy was completely confused, but only for a moment. His mind instantly steadied to complete acceptance of the situation.

“This is the end of Andy Burnett,” he thought. He even found in a corner of his mind space for admiration at the speed and dexterity of the maneuver. The men were a full fifty feet distant; they had snatched the reatas from their saddle horns, had run their loops, had cast them before even the mountain man’s customary quick reactions had responded. He found another small space for mortification that he should have been caught thus unaware, and a counter comforting reflection that it was only his complete ignorance of this new type of deadly weapon that had betrayed him.

He sat quiet, without attempt at struggle. The vaqueros had taken each a turn about his pommel, had turned their horses half away, had poised their spurs. Their eyes were fixed inquiringly upon their master.

The latter touched his own mount with the spur to edge it daintily close to Andy’s own.

“What say you now, señor?” he inquired, softly in Spanish, “I but raise my hand—and my men are off and away, like the wind. And you? What of you? It is not a pleasant death, señor. One lives to feel the earth clutching at one’s body with fingers of iron, tearing the flesh from the bones, until at last it has torn down through the flesh to the life. Eh, señor, what say you to that?”

His face was close, his dancing black eyes searching the depths of Andy’s for the effects of his words. Andy stared steadily back at him.

“What do you say, señor?” insisted the other.

“Raise your hand,” replied Andy quietly.

“Caramba!” cried the Californian. “You at least are no coward!”

He signaled to the vaqueros; then, as they hesitated in reluctance, more imperiously. They rode forward grumbling, loosened the loops, released Andy from the nooses, and re-coiled the reatas at their saddlebows. Without dismounting, the young man swooped gracefully down from his saddle, retrieved the long rifle from the ground, returned it to the frontiersman with a half-mocking bow.

“You could have killed me, señor,” said he. “You did not. I could have killed you. I did not. We are quits. And now, again, let us ride together for better acquaintance.”

He wheeled his horse, slapped Andy’s mount lightly to put it in motion.

“You are no coward, señor,” he repeated. “You called me one—will you be gracious enough to tell me why?”

Andy was confused and just a little shamed. His pride of a mountain man was still sore at having been so flagrantly caught unaware. He hesitated, then bluntly blurted out the truth. He told of the harmless wild savages he had met in the upper valley, of their mystifying dumb friendliness, of his meeting with Cortilla, the lieutenant, and his four soldiers hunting horse thieves, of Cortilla’s unprovoked attack on the savages and the subsequent massacre.

“It was a cowardly outrage, señor,” he stated stoutly. “These people were practically unarmed, they were friendly, unsuspicious. They killed children, old women. These men were cowards. They were your countrymen.”

The young man listened attentively, without speaking, up to this point.

“So you concluded I too am a coward,” he commented dryly.

“My mind was sore, my heart was on the ground.” Andy voiced the quaint phrase of his Indian affiliations in half apology.

Don Ramón reflected.

“Basta,” said he at last. “Partly I comprehend; though these Indians are animals and must be made to fear. But, señor, those others were not my countrymen: they were Mexicans. They are of la otra banda.”

“I do not understand.” Andy was puzzled. “Are not you——?”

“I, a Mexican!” Ramón drew back proudly. “The saints forbid! I am californio! But go on.”

Andy told, diffidently now, of his interposition, of how, single handed, he had stopped the massacre, and finally of how he had spanked Cortilla with his own sword.

Ramón listened with interest, with growing amusement. At the farcical dénouement he gave vent to his feelings in a great shout of delight.

“But, listen, Panchito, José,” he summoned the vaqueros to his side, “the great Cortilla! With his own sword! Did you hear what this señor has related?”

The men’s grave faces broke to a sardonic relish. Andy felt the warmth of a complete approval. He did not understand it wholly as yet, but it was grateful to the loneliness of his soul. In spite of himself a liking began to creep into his heart for these strange companions, a liking illogical, against all his sober Anglo-Saxon prejudices, but genuine.

“With his own sword! The great Cortilla!” the Californian repeated. “Oh, corazón de mi alma, I could love you for this!”

He swung the guitar to his hands, dropped his reins, struck sweetly its chords, and in a melodious tenor began to sing some obviously improvised doggerel celebrating in mock heroics this extraordinary feat of arms. His horse, unguided, paced stately as a parade. Andy rode soberly alongside. Under the unbelievable blue of the California sky, with the brown plains about him bordered by mountains that somehow looked as fragile as pasteboard, with wide oaks spaced as though planted, with this bizarre, brilliant retinue in its bright trappings, led by the troubadour with the guitar, he seemed to himself to have entered somehow a realm of unreality, to have been lifted body and soul from the stark harshness of his old life. Softly and mysteriously he experienced the relief of the man who, long submerged, bursts at last above the water’s surface to fill his choking lungs with the thin, sweet air of life.

Ramón suddenly ceased his song and swung aside the guitar.

“Valedor mío!” he cried.

Valedor. Andy searched in his memory for the word. It came to him at last. Friend: nay, more than merely friend, one especially trusted, one near to the heart.