Читать книгу Ranchero - Stewart Edward White - Страница 13

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“Don Ramón!” cried one of the vaqueros suddenly.

Andy had already seen the object of his attention, a lumbering grizzly bear, prowling out in the open, a hundred yards or so from a dense willow thicket in a barranca. He paid it no attention. He had seen plenty of “white bears” in his time and rarely bothered them.

“Now you shall see esport!” cried Ramón. “Holá!”

The three Californians struck spurs to their horses and dashed away at a speed more rapid than Andy’s smaller and travel-wearied animals could equal. He arrived on the scene to find the bear already bayed-up, its ruff erect, its eyes blazing and badgered, its great head, with its bared, snarling teeth, swinging to and fro following the movements of the dancing horses that circled slowly about it at the distance of twenty yards or less. The horses were wild with fear, or perhaps merely with excitement, but were held to the task in a control of perfect horsemanship. Each man had the coil of his reata in his left hand, with his reins, and from his right dangled the loop.

Andy, riding up, made a motion to dismount for a standing shot. He had no enthusiasm for the affair, but supposed it expected of him, and so prepared to do his best. The bear was a large one and already very angry. Andy had no tree into which to spring while awaiting the effect of a heart shot. The bullet was too likely to glance from the sloping skull. He resolved to try for the difficult, but instantly fatal, eye shot. It did not occur to him for a moment that he was invited only as spectator; that these men intended to capture and to kill this largest and fiercest of America’s wild animals with no other weapons than the slender oiled rawhide reatas. If he had understood that, he would have considered it a harebrained reckless bit of bravado; doomed, if carried through, to possibly a fatal, certainly a disastrous ending. And if anyone had told him, as was the truth, that in protection of the cattle such men as now accompanied him, with no other weapon, made it a regular business to hunt and to kill just such bears as the one now confronting them, he would have dismissed the statement as merely another tall story for greenhorn consumption.

“No! no-no-no!” cried Ramón. “Do not get down. You shall see!”

He apparently was struck with a new idea, so suddenly that under the impulse of it he brought his horse to a full stand. The bear roared and charged at this stationary target.

“Señor!” “Look out!” cried Andy and the others.

Ramón danced his horse aside in a quick falcon swoop. The vaqueros shouted, circling in opposite directions. The bear, confused, stopped again, growling in his throat. Ramón was laughing.

“You have said me a coward, señor,” he called gayly to Andy.

He stooped to disengage his spurs, which he tossed toward the bear; then in a sudden movement he vaulted clear of his saddle, landing lightly on his feet. He slapped his horse, the beautiful palomino, on the flank, and it trotted away. His rapier was bared in his right hand, his broadcloth poncho with its frivolous filigree silver embroidery trailed from his left.

“Madre de Dios, Don Ramón!” cried Panchito, raising the loop of his reata. José pressed forward. “Don’t be a damn fool!” growled Andy, cocking his rifle.

“Stand back, it is a command!” cried Ramón sharply. “—and you, señor, I beseech it.”

He advanced with mincing steps toward the bear. The animal, nonplussed at this strange démarche, closed its jaws, half rose on its hind legs, pricked forward its ears, peered through its little eyes at this strange unknown creature advancing so confidently. When at ten feet of distance, Ramón stopped, brought his heels together, raised his rapier in the fencer’s salute.

The bear was puzzled, even for the moment a little alarmed. The unknown is always alarming, to both beast and human. The animal knew four-legged but not two-legged creatures. It is possible that his next reaction might have been one of retreat, were retreat permitted by the horsemen; but before he could focus his slow mind the man had sprung forward. The rapier blade darted twice, swift as a snake’s tongue, pricking each of the bear’s fore paws. With almost the same motion Ramón leaped back to resume his graceful fencer’s pose of en garde.

With a roar the great beast charged. Ramón sprang lightly to one side; brushed the poncho across the bear’s face; thrusting again with the rapier, this time at the bear’s chest. His sense of direction momentarily confused, the bear stopped, shook its head, roared, looked about for its elusive antagonist, charged again. And again Ramón evaded the rush by a twist of the body, a cast of the cloak, and again the rapier flashed in and out.

“Hah! oso!” he shouted.

The bear was thoroughly aroused. It was overwhelming, the menace of such fury and such power. Its eyes blazed, its jaws slavered, its great body seemed to expand. A terrible expectation charged the atmosphere as of the gathering of resistless force, like the power of a hurricane. Panchito and José leaned forward against their pommels, their brows knit, muttering to one another, shaking their heads. The horses snorted and trembled, held only by the rigid discipline of their riders’ firm and accustomed hands. Andy’s mount was not so amenable. It plunged and bored at the bit. He had as much as he could do to control it at all.

The strange combat quickened. The bear’s rushes were shorter, more purposeful. It struck savagely with its great paws at the maddening, confusing poncho, trying to tear it aside that it might more clearly reach his antagonist. Only by the most astonishing agility did Ramón continue to escape. But escape he did, though sometimes by so close a margin as to elicit from the vaqueros a sharp involuntary cry of warning or alarm. And never did the rapier fail to dart in and out like a flash of light. The foam on the bear’s jaws was now flecked with blood; and blood trickled over its shaggy hide from a dozen wounds. Nevertheless, it seemed to be as strong and as fast as ever.

With a curse at this fractious animal Andy leaped from his saddle. He was wrought to a high and unusual pitch of excitement. The thing was absurd, senseless, mad. Andy was too experienced a frontiersman to be carried away by the mere excitement of a situation, to be raised above its calculations and appraisals by the exultations of mere glory. The terrain was rough, and a slip or a stumble would disconcert Ramón’s close avoidances. The bear, though wounded, was apparently unchecked and was gathering fury and adroitness as the combat proceeded. Thrice had Ramón saved himself by an apparent miracle. Andy watched his chance until for a split second the bear paused motionless, then delivered his shot with all the speed and iron concentration of his long experience, and also, be it confessed, with a fervent outrush of petition from his heart. It was a good shot; a wonderful shot, and also, Andy realized with deep thankfulness, a lucky shot. The bullet entered the animal’s eye, so accurately that afterwards it was found it had not touched the eyelids. The bear rolled over, pierced to the brain.

The vaqueros uttered a deep groan of relief. Panchito expelled his breath loudly. Ramón wiped his blade on a tuft of grass and turned reproachfully to the mountain man.

“That I do not take kindly, señor,” said he softly.

Andy grunted obstinately, reloading his piece.

Ramón surveyed the huge carcass.

“This, señor, was a personal duel, you comprehend, a personal duel with a grand antagonist. Shortly I would have touched the heart.” He shook his head. “Never have I known one to kill a bear with a sword, como el toro.”

“But I have known the bear to kill the man, como el aturdido,” said Andy dryly.

“You call me harebrained, señor?” demanded Ramón, rearing his head.

“Well, aren’t you?” demanded Andy in his turn, but with an engaging smile.

“Sí, señor!” approved Panchito fervently.

Ramón turned to stare at his henchman. But Panchito refused to be subdued.

“El extranjero is right, Don Ramón,” he insisted, “and to that the holy saints are witness.”

“I should have won the fight,” insisted the young Californian to Andy.

“May be, señor,” returned Andy unmoved, “but your men were doing nothing to help, and I will never stand by and see a brave man so uselessly in such danger.”

“Hah! a brave man,” Ramón caught him up. “Then I am no longer a coward, eh? You say that? It is all I seek.” He touched the bear with the toe of his bota. “As for Panchito and José, you must not despise them. They are my men: they obey me to the death.”

“So I perceive,” returned Andy dryly, “—even to your death,” he added.

Ramón threw back his head and laughed long and joyously. He reverted to English. Indeed, it is henceforth to be understood that both young men used now one language, now the other, as seemed to fit the subject or their mood.

“It is good to laugh,” he said presently. “I am delight to see la burla—what you say, the joke—beneath that face of yours so serio.” He examined the bear with a growing wonder, touching the wound made by the bullet, parting the unmarked eyelids. “That was a miracle of shooting, amigo.”

“Luck,” replied Andy briefly.

“That I do not believe. Hah! you shall prove that.” He looked about him over the brown side hill. Halfway up to its crest, near a scattered grove of live oaks, the earth had been thrown into a multitude of scattered mounds by a colony of squirrels. Here and there the little animals, driven below ground by the turmoil of the combat, were beginning to emerge. One sat, atop its hillock, erect, its paws across its chest, shrieking indignantly.

“Think you, you can hit me that beast?” inquired Ramón.

Andy estimated the distance.

“Why, I think so, señor,” said he.

The vaqueros murmured incredulously; and even Ramón permitted himself a skeptical smile which he instantly and politely erased.

“You doubt, señor,” said Andy, aroused. “See, I will do better. I will clip you the top of his head.”

To the long-practised marksman armed with the long rifle the shot was not very difficult; but the Californians were unaccustomed to firearms and acquainted only with the clumsy smooth-bore escopeta, capable at that distance of about a two- or three-foot group. The proposal seemed preposterous. They watched Andy take his deliberate stance with the breathless interest of children; and when he fulfilled his promise they exclaimed with so generous an admiration that, in spite of himself, a new spirit of happy, almost boyish satisfaction welled up in his heart.

“I should not care to have you shoot at me, amigo,” said Ramón. “If ever it were my misfortune to fight against you, I would much prefer to entertain you at close quarters.” He touched the hilt of his rapier. “And this.” He laid his hand on the coiled reata at his saddlebow.

In tacit answer Andy produced his other deadly trick. That is to say, he unsheathed his knife and with it made one of the marvelously accurate casts for which, in the mountain country, he had been famous; sinking its point deep in the center of the target of his selection, a lichen mark on one of the live oak trees. And instantly he was ashamed of this braggadocio, this display of foofaraw. It was exactly like a small boy showing off, Andy thought. So when all three of the Californians expressed a genuine wonder and admiration at the feat his manner became in reaction gruff and repellent. Nevertheless, deep down within him was a lifting satisfaction that refused to be abashed, a lightness of irresponsibility that he had never experienced. You see boyhood had been denied him, and in this warm and friendly atmosphere it was coming naturally into a belated burgeoning.