Читать книгу The Hand of the Mighty, and Other Stories - Vaughan Kester - Страница 6

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WHEN the Bad Man of Las Vegas left Baker's ranch, taking himself reluctantly from the midst of the unrighteous revel that was being held there, day was just breaking.

It was about mid-morning and the sun was high in the heavens when his horse stepped gingerly over the cactus bushes and into the well worn trail that led down to Las Vegas.

The Bad Man drew rein. He was having a moment with his conscience; one of the consequences of the early ride; or it may have been the unavoidable aftermath of Baker's whisky, which had been not only abundant but vile.

He recalled how he had come to Las Vegas, a raw lad of twenty. He saw himself as he was then, lank and wondering, with factory bleached skin. He had come West to make his fortune. When that was accomplished he was to return and settle down in the old home where his godly forefathers had dwelt since Pilgrim times, self-respecting and respected.

Las Vegas had been notorious for its wickedness when he first drifted there. For a while he had kept clear of it all, then the experience of a single night had changed the whole after current of his life. Entering one of the gambling hells in search of a friend, he had found him at cards with the bully of the place. He had tried to get him from the room, there had been words, a quarrel, and then all was a blank until he awoke from the delirium of his fear and anger to find himself in the center of the room, beneath the flaring kerosene lamps, with the bully dead in the shadow at his feet.

He lived the years swiftly after that, in a sort of mad, blood-letting frenzy. Every man has friends, and one killing involves other killings. It was not enough that he had killed one bad man; he must keep on killing bad men or else fall himself.

He had preferred to keep on. He speedily acquired a fatal handiness with his weapons, in a few months growing into the strong alert man capable of holding his own against all comers.

He knew, though the change came slowly and almost imperceptibly, that he was none the less surely living toward that day when he would be hunted out of Las Vegas; when the advancing tide of civilization would touch and pause there, and his career would culminate with one murder too many.

He took off his hat to let the wind fan his forehead. It was like the springs he had known in the East.

He seemed to catch the odor of roses and honeysuckle—he remembered his first and only love. Their parting came back to him with vivid minuteness of detail. It had all been infinitely bitter to them, but he was going where a man had a chance, and he would return.

He had scarcely thought of it in years, and now there was only the scent of the flowers and her face rising out of the gray plain before him. She had done her part faithfully and then she had married, to live her days amid the hard commonplaceness of the little eastern village where she was born.

The Bad Man gathered up the reins, which had fallen from his hand to the horn of the saddle, and was about to apply the spur to his horse's flank, when, glancing back over his shoulder, he saw a wagon coming down the trail, the center of a moving cloud of dust. Influenced by a sudden impulse he could not explain, he permitted the reins to fall slack again.

As the wagon came nearer he saw that it was a homesteader's outfit drawn by a single horse that was dark with sweat and dust and flecked here and there with white splotches of foam. A man was driving, and at his back a woman's face was visible.

As the wagon drew up alongside of the Bad Man the homesteader reined in his horse. Las Vegas' questionable hero spoke first. He merely remarked that it was a fine day. The homesteader inspected him narrowly before answering the greeting, then he said—and his tone was one of surly reserve, while his manner was neither easy nor gracious—“It is a fine day.”

He was a round-shouldered man of thirty-five with a sallow unhealthy skin and a scanty ill-kept beard. He had put aside his coat and wore only a faded, much mended cotton shirt and overalls—once blue, but now showing white at the seams—tucked carelessly into the tops of heavy boots.

The woman peered out anxiously and fearfully at the stranger.

The latter said by way of continuing the conversation:

“Where are you bound for, pardner?”

“Sunken River Valley. Got a brother there,” was the gruff response.

The Bad Man looked him over carefully and critically, then the wagon, and last of all the horse. He noted that the wagon showed the effects of the roads and a long journey. The jingle it sent forth whenever the horse moved spoke eloquently for repairs. The horse, however, though it had been driven hard, was comparatively fresh and able. The gentleman from Las Vegas lived in a community where men were largely judged by their horses, and he decided that the animal before him was a recent purchase.

“Where are you from?” he asked, when done with his scrutiny.

“Western Kansas. It's a hell of a country. Grasshoppers one year and no water the next. About cleaned me out.” Then he added surlily: “If you are done looking me over, I guess I'll be moving.”

Meantime the woman had disappeared from view, but she could be heard speaking to some one inside the wagon. Then a child's voice, fretful and tired, answered hers.

The homesteader's manner, even more than his words, was an affront to the Bad Man, who was perhaps unduly sensitive in such matters. He was debating whether he should not interpose, some objections to his continuing on his road, when the woman called out querulously: “Do drive on, Joe. It seems as though we shall never get there!”

The man saluted with his whip. “So long.” And the wagon with a creak and a rattle rolled off, jangling as it went.

The Bad Man touched his horse with the spur. “I'm going your way,” he said.

For a time they rode on in silence. Every now and then the homesteader stole a glance of doubt and mistrust at his insistent and evidently unwelcome companion. Clearly he was far from being at ease. Finally he said:

“You weren't wanting to say anything in particular to me, were you?”

The Bad Man regarded him with mild surprise. “I reckon not,” he answered.

“I didn't know. Only you seemed so all-fired set on stickin' close to me, that's all; I didn't mean no offense.”

There was a pause. The Bad Man turned the matter slowly over in his wind. He had formed a very unfavorable opinion of the homesteader, and was wondering whether it was not a duty he owed society to tell him so frankly. He allowed a certain latitude because of the different sense of humor different men have, but there was nothing funny about the homesteader. He was just plain uncivil.

“Yes, sir-ee,” said the homesteader, “western Kansas is a hell of a place. It ain't worth the powder it would take to blow it to blazes. I wish I'd never seen it. When I made up my mind to come West, my wife sort of persuaded me to stop there. She didn't want to go any farther. Sort of wanted to keep somewhere near the folks in old Vermont. Then she was taken sick; she was ailing before we started West. Then our two boys up and died, and now the young un's down. It's mighty hard on her ma. I got a brother in Sunken River Valley, and some of the folks from back East moved out there while we were in Kansas. My wife will be mighty well satisfied when she gets among her own sort again. Women get lonely so darn easy.”

They could hear the mother singing softly to the sick child. The Bad Man jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

“What's the matter?”

“Fever,” said the other laconically.

“So you are from Vermont?”

“Yes. Wish I was there now, you bet. It's God's own country.”

“What part of the state do you come from?”

“Central part. Barrettsville.”

The Bad Man started violently, but recovered himself on the instant.

“I suppose you are pretty well acquainted there?” he asked, with studied indifference.

“I ought to be. Lived there most of my life.”

“That's singular. I met a fellow from Vermont just the other day, from Barrettsville, too.”

“Lots of our folks have come West. They're scattered all over out here. Some of 'em are doing mighty well, too.”

“You didn't happen to know the Thomases, did you?”—with elaborate carelessness. “Which?”

“I guess the man I am asking about had something to do with the mills. There are mills there, ain't there?”

“Well, I declare! That's funny!” and the homesteader laughed a mirthless cackle. “Should say I did know the Thomases. My wife was a Thomas—old French Thomas' daughter. But”—lowering his voice—“the old man's been dead five years come next May.”

The Bad Man turned his face away.

So that was the woman he had loved!

There was silence again, undisturbed save for the clatter of the horses' hoofs and the rattle of the wagon. The child was asleep, and its mother no longer sang to it.

The homesteader thrust aside the flaps and glanced in. The woman, with the child in her arms, was seated on a mattress at the back of the wagon, looking out at the long dusty streak that wound over the range and lost itself in the gray distance of the plain.

Craning his neck the Bad Man saw her, and then as her husband dropped the flaps, he pulled up his horse and drew in behind the wagon. The woman raised her eyes.

“Is the little one asleep?” he asked, his voice shaking with an awkward tenderness.

“Yes. She's just pining away for green fields and trees.”

He surveyed the woman before him with a certain wonder. He would never have recognized her, she was so changed, so altered from the likeness he had carried in his heart; but now, knowing who she was, he could trace where she had fallen from that likeness. He was quite sure she could not recognize him, for he had changed, too, but in a different way.

“If he'd drive slower, wouldn't it be easier for her?”

The woman looked into his face in alarm.

“We want to get there as quick as we can. Seems as though we'd never get there!”

“You can't make it to-day.”

“My husband says he'll drive till he gets there if it takes all night.”

“There'll be a dead horse between the shafts if he tries it,” said the Bad Man in a tone of calm conviction.

“The horse——” and the woman stopped.

“I don't reckon he sets much value on the brute from the way he drives.”

The woman gazed fixedly into his face. “Did he tell you?” she questioned in a frightened whisper.

In a flash he realized what the trouble was. “He shouldn't have done it,” he said gravely. “I know that,” she answered breathlessly. “But what could he do? Our own horse had died. We had no money, and with the baby sick we just couldn't stop! If he is found out, what then?” The Bad Man shook his head dubiously. “I'd rather not say.”

“Do they hang men for horse stealing?”

“They have,” he answered shortly.

Further conversation was interrupted by the sudden stopping of the wagon.

“Darnation! Which trail do I take?”

The Bad Man pointed to the right.

“There's your road. You'll find it plain enough.”

“Much obliged to you, stranger. I don't reckon you're going over to Sunken River Valley yourself?”

“Hold on;” and a detaining hand was placed upon the lines the homesteader held. “That's a good horse you're driving, pardner, but if you keep this pace you'll take only his hide and bones into Sunken River Valley with you.”

“I've got to get there, horse or no horse,” answered the man nervously.

“How'd you like to trade? I've taken a fancy to that animal of yours, and if you're bent on killing a horse I don't, know but I'd rather have you kill the one I'm riding.”

The homesteader leaped from his seat on the instant.

“I'll do it!” Then he bethought him that perhaps some little display of reluctance might be seemly and natural. “Your horse is sound, of course?”

“Sound as a dollar. Look it over if you don't think so.”

The woman came to the front of the wagon, listening breathlessly. Now she put the flaps aside and looked out.

Her husband turned to her. “We're going to swap horses—you don't care, do you?”

She tried to meet the glance of the Bad Man, but could not.

“It's all right, wife?”

“Yes,” she answered in a low voice; “it's all right.”

The animal was already free from the shafts, and at her word he led it out from between them. The Bad Man threw himself astride the stolen horse.

“I'll say good day to you, pardner—and to—you”—to the woman, and without a word more he was galloping off down the trail toward Las Vegas. |

“I guess I was darn lucky to get rid of that horse,” the homesteader remarked, as he gazed after the Bad Man.

The woman said nothing. She only wondered.