Читать книгу The Land of Strong Men (Western Novel) - Western Novel - Страница 5

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Deciding that it was too late to go back after the deer, Angus headed for home. The sun was down when he struck into a wagon trail a couple of miles from the ranch, and he had followed it but a few hundred yards when he heard the sound of hoofs behind him. Turning in his saddle he recognized horse and rider which were overhauling him rapidly.

"What's the rush, Dave?" he asked as they drew level.

Whatever the rush had been it seemed to be over. The rider slowed to a walk. He was a small man, apparently in the forties, wiry and sun-dried. His name was Rennie, and he was nominally a homesteader, though he did little more than comply with the statutory requirements. In winter he trapped and in summer he turned his hand to almost anything. He was a wizard with horses, he knew the habits of most wild animals thoroughly and he had seen a great deal of the old West. He and young Mackay were friends, and he had taught the boy many things from his own store of experience. As he pulled up, the boy noted that Blaze's bright coat was dark with sweat and that his head hung wearily.

"You've been combing some speed out of that cayuse," he commented.

"He's been on grass and lathers easy," Rennie returned. "But I was—I was sorter lookin' for you, kid."

"Why?"

"Well, you see—your daddy he wants you."

"He knew I was hunting. I got a two-year old buck, but it was too late to pack him in. What does he want me for?"

The question seemed to embarrass Rennie exceedingly. He gulped and went into a fit of coughing which left him red in the face.

"He wants to talk to you," he replied at last. "He—he wants to tell you something, I guess. He—he ain't right well, your daddy ain't."

"Not well!" the boy cried in amazement. "Why, what's the matter with him, Dave?"

"A little accident—just a little accident, kid. He—he—now you don't want to go worryin' about it; not yet, anyway."

But Rennie's effort to break bad news gently was too obvious. The boy's voice took on a sharp note of alarm.

"What sort of an accident?" he demanded. "Is he hurt? Talk up, can't you?"

"Well, now, durn it, kid, I'd ruther break a leg than tell you—but your daddy, he's been shot up some."

"Do you mean he's dead?" the boy cried in wide-eyed horror.

"No, he ain't dead—or he wasn't when I started out to find you. But—but he's plugged plumb center, and—and—Oh, hell, I guess you know what I'm tryin' to say!"

The boy stared at him dumbly while the slow thudding pad of the horses' feet on the soft trail smote on his ears like the sound of muffled drums. He failed at first, as the young must ever fail, to comprehend the full meaning of the message. His father dead or dying! His father, Adam Mackay, that living tower of muscle and sinew who could lift with his hands logs with which other men struggled with cant-hook and peavie, who could throw a steel-beamed breaking plow aboard a wagon as another man would handle a wheel-hoe? It was unbelievable.

But slowly the realization was forced upon him. His father had been shot, and with the knowledge came the flame of bitter anger and desire for revenge that was his in right of the blood in his veins. And the desire momentarily overwhelmed sorrow.

"Who did it?" he asked, his young voice a fierce, croaking whisper.

"I dunno. He won't tell anybody. Maybe he'll tell you."

"Come on!" Angus Mackay cried, and dug heels into his pony.

The pony was blown and gasping as they rode up to the ranch and Angus leaped from his back. Rennie's hand fell on his shoulder.

"Kid," he said earnestly, "you want to brace up and keep braced. If it's a show-down for your daddy he'll like to know you're takin' it like a man. Then there's Jean and Turkey. This here happens to everybody, and while it's tough it's a part of the game. And just one more thing: If you find out who done the shootin', let me know!"

The boy nodded, because he could not trust himself to speak, and ran into the house. It was hushed in the twilight. Already it seemed to hold a little of the strange stillness which comes with the departure of a familiar presence. As the boy paused, from a corner came a little, sniffling sob, and in the semi-darkness he saw his young brother, Torquil, curled miserably upon a skin-covered couch. Paying no attention to him he crossed the living room and as he did so his sister Jean entered. In some mysterious way she seemed years older than the girl-child who had come running after him in the gray mists of that morning. Dry-eyed, slender, quiet-moving, like the shadow of a girl in the gloom, she led him back and closed the door. He obeyed her touch without question, without a trace of his superiority of the morning. In face of sickness and death, like most of his sex he felt helpless, impotent. He put his long arm around his sister and suddenly she clung to him, her slender body shaking.

"He's not—dead—Jean?"

"Not—not yet, Angus. Dr. Wilkes is with him now. He says he won't live long. He didn't want to tell me, but I made him."

She told him all she knew. Adam Mackay had ridden away by himself that morning, no one knew whither. In the afternoon he had come home swaying in his saddle, shot through the body. Then young Turkey has climbed into the blood-soaked saddle and ridden for the doctor. As to how he had met with his hurt Adam Mackay had said no word.

The inner door opened to admit a burly, thick-bodied man with reddish hair sprinkled with gray and grizzled, bushy eyebrows. This was Dr. Wilkes. He nodded to Angus.

"You're in time. Your father wants you. Go to him, and call me if anything happens."

"He's going to—going to—"

The boy was unable to complete the sentence. The doctor put his arm over his shoulder for a moment in a kindly, elder-brotherly touch.

"I'm afraid so, my boy. In fact, I know so. Keep a stiff upper lip, old man. He'll like that."

Adam Mackay stared at his eldest son hungrily from the pillows. Above his great black beard his face was gray. He was a great frame of a man, long, lean and sinewy. The likeness of father and son was marked. He held out his hand feebly and the boy took it and choked. Then Adam Mackay spoke in a little whisper so unlike his usual deep voice that the boy was startled, and because it was near the end with him his words carried the sharp twist and hiss of the Gaelic which was the tongue of his youth; for though Adam Mackay had never seen Scotland, he had been born in a settlement which, fifty years before, was more Gaelic than the Highlands themselves.

"It cannot be helped, son, and it is little I care for myself. When you come to face death, many years from now, please the God, you'll find it no' sic' a fearful thing. But it is you and the children that worries me now, Angus."

"Never mind us, father," the boy said. "I can look after Jean and Turkey."

The stricken giant smiled at him with a quiet pride of which the recollection years after warmed the boy's heart.

"I had hoped for twenty years of life yet, by which time you would have been settled, with children of your own. Eh, well, the young birds must fledge and fly alone, and your wings are well sprouted, Angus-lad. You have in you the makings of a man, though yet headstrong and dour by nature. And now listen, son, for my time is short: I look to you to take the place I can no longer fill. You are the Mackay, the head of the family. Remember that, and cease before your time to be a boy."

"I will, father," the boy promised.

"There is little or no money, worse luck," the man went on. "All I have had I have put into land and timber, and the fire burnt the timber: But in time the land will make you rich, though not yet awhile, maybe. But till it does, the ranch will give you a living. Sell nothing now—not an acre. Promise me, boy!"

"I promise, father," the boy replied.

"A promise to a dying father is an oath," the man went on. "But no Mackay of our Mackays ever broke his word passed for good or ill. Remember that, too. I have made a will, and all I have is left to you as the eldest son. That has ever been our custom. When the time comes, and they are older, deal generously with your sister and brother. That is our custom, too. Of this will, the man Braden is named as executor. I had intended—but it is too late now. He is a man of business and has the name of an upright man. But if you need advice, son, go to Judge Riley, drunkard and all as he is. But for that he should have been in Braden's place. That is all, I think. I feel more content now." And he closed his eyes with a sigh.

"I will remember, father," the boy said. "But who did this? Who shot you?"

The eyes opened and searched his deeply for many seconds.

"Why do you want to know?"

"I ought to know," the boy replied.

"You want to know," his father said, "so that if the law should fail, you would take the old law of the old days into your young hands. Is that it, my son?"

"Yes," the boy admitted, "that is it. And why for no, father?"

For a moment the graying face of the dying man lighted with a swift gleam of pride and satisfaction. Then he lifted his great hand feebly.

"You have bred true, lad. Ever were the Mackays good haters, bitter of heart and heavy of hand. So I have been all my days, and no man did me wrong that I did not repay it. But listen, son o' mine: Lying here with my man's strength gone from me and the shadows on my soul I see more clearly, as clearly as old Murdoch McGillivray, who is dead, and as you know had the gift while he lived. And I tell you now that hate and revenge are the things worth least in life; and, moreover, that the things worth most in life and much more in death, are love, and work well done, and a heart clean of bitterness. And so I will tell you nothing at all."

"Please, father!" the boy pleaded, for as his father had said he had bred true.

"No and no, I tell you, no!" Adam Mackay refused. "No killing will bring me back. I will not lay a feud upon you. Blood and blood, and yet more blood I have seen come of such things. I know you, Angus, bone o' my bone and flesh o' my flesh as I know my own youth, and of the knowledge in that one thing I will not trust you. I die, and that is the end of it, for me and for all of me. Your duty is to the living. And now call you Jean and Torquil, that I may bid them farewell. And take you my blessing such as it is; for I feel the darkness closing upon me."

An hour later Adam Mackay was dead. And that day was the last of Angus Mackay's careless boyhood.