Читать книгу The Second Western Megapack - Zane Grey - Страница 10

READY FOR A COFFIN, by Gene Austin

There was a heavy silence in the saloon as the big man got to his feet, holding his his bloody mouth with one hand and beating the sawdust off the seat of his levis with the other.

“There, ain’t nobody can do that to Luke James and get away with it,” he swore, glaring around with hate gleaming in his little eyes. “I’ll be back—don’t any­one forget it.”

He turned and stumbled through the batwing doors into the darkness outside, and the men lined up at the bar shifted their eyes to the only seated man in the place.

Jake Perkins wouldn’t have been sitting down if it had been possible for him to stand, but his legs had grown old while his mind stayed young, and they no longer responded to the orders he would like to have given them. And he didn’t like the air of silence and concern in the saloon.

“Lookee here,” he growled, scowl­ing ferociously. “I didn’t trundle this here wheelchair of mine down here to be stared at like a two-headed maverick. Everybody order up drinks on me, and let’s get back to the merrymaking. If’n you want to stare, stare at this blasted freak of a bird I got here—he don’t mind it!”

Jake addressed a few cuss words at a big, black glossy crow seated on the arm of his wheelchair, which had been looking with a wa­tering beak at one of the bright sil­ver buttons on Jake’s breast. Prob­ably conscious of the attention called to it, the crow flapped its wings several times and returned to its contemplation of the button. Jake cussed it again and scowled back at the men.

“Well, what you waitin’ on? James ain’t comin’ back tonight, at least!”

“You’re mighty cool about it, Jake,” somebody said. “If Luke James got it in for me like he did you tonight, I don’t reckon I’d stay in this country two minutes.”

“What if he did get it in for me!” Jake bawled. “Was I supposed to sit here like a cripple while he gun-whipped that new schoolteacher? Or was I supposed to take off this here belt of mine and whop him across the face with it and give the school­teacher a chance to paste him one? Eh? I was supposed to whop him, naturally. Say, where is that school-teacher? What happened to him?”

Everybody looked around for the schoolteacher, but he was no longer present.

“Musta slipped out,” some­body said.

“Well, no matter,” Jake said. “Let’s warm our windpipes with some o’ that rotgut they sell here, and let the crow worry about Luke James. Satan,” he growled, sneering at the crow again, in the way he had of showing his love for any­thing, “what does an ignorant, good-for-nothin’ bird have to say about this?”

The crow, which had a vocabulary of four or five extremely profound sentences, looked around and observed, “If I go to heaven, I want to take my horse. Ha! Go to heaven and take my horse. Blast, it! Ha, ha!”

Jake took a sock at the bird, which flew to a safer point atop a nearby whiskey bottle, and the drinking in the saloon was resumed.

* * * *

Jake left a few minutes after­ward, after coaxing Satan back and placing him in his special cage under the chair seat, and then wheel­ing himself through the doors and into the cool night air.

“Ready to go home?” A voice said, and a man who had been leaning against the saloon hitch-rack stepped over to him. It was the new school­teacher, Bob Partridge.

“What you hangin’ around out here for?” Jake demanded, halting the progress of his wheelchair.

“I just wanted to make sure that Luke James didn’t hang around,” the schoolteacher said. He was a tall, good-looking young man, and obvious­ly new to Western ways. He wore his sixgun belted tight around his waist, and after informing him that it would be much easier to reach if allowed to hang slack on his hip, Jake added suspiciously: “What you, askin’ me if I’m ready to go home for? You ain’t got any ideas that I pay any’ attention to my niece sayin’ I got to be in by ten, do you?”

“Oh, of course not,” Partridge said blandly. “I just wondered if you’d mind my walking along with you—I understand your house isn’t far down the road. And I want to thank you for what you did in there, although I wish I could have handled him myself. Uh—your niece—that’s Miss Mary Platt, isn’t it—the girl who teaches the younger children at the school?”

“That’s her all right,”’Jake snorted. “And of all the no-good females that ever lived, she’s the worst. As for thankin’ me for what I did, it warn’t nothin’ at all. Luke James didn’t have no call to start on you jus’ because you said he ought to learn to read. Every­body ought to learn to read.”

“You read, of course,” Partridge said.

Jake coughed. “Well—it’s been a long time. I mean, I don’t exactly read, but I sure like to look at pic­tures. I—”

Partridge quickly changed the sub­ject, all the more because Jake’s cur­few time was fast approaching, and he well knew the old man wanted to get home on time.

“That’s fine, Mr. Perkins—but it don’t get rid of Luke James. I’ve only been here two days, but I’ve seen enough to know he’s as dangerous as a snake. He’s got a lot of pride—he’s off somewhere now licking it, and he isn’t going to stand for the humiliation he took in that saloon. He’s going to be after both of us—you for hitting him in the face with your belt-buckle, me for knocking him down and dis­arming him.”

“I ain’t scared of him,” Jake but­ted in, his face very grim now. “But you’re right; if you’re as smart as schoolteachers are supposed to be, you’ll get out of town quick. You got guts and a good left, but no gun-savvy. If you don’t leave, you’ll be teachin’ the stiffs up in Boothill the correct way to lay in a coffin.”

Partridge tried the gun on his hip, drawing it clumsily and causing Jake to fear that he would accidently blow them both to Boothill.

“And what about you?” Partridge asked.

“What about me?” Jake roared, maneuvering his wheelchair out of the way till the schoolteacher holstered the .45. “I’m sixty-five years old—older’n any man should live to be in these United States. It’s high time I died and made room for some young feller. There ain’t nobody cares nothin’ for me—I ain’t worth a stale sour-dough cracker even to myself. And so I’d be glad to let James have the priv­ilege of puttin’ me out of my misery—except for one thing—”

“What’s that?” Partridge asked, grabbing the handle of Jake’s wheelchair and pushing him down the street, much to the old man’s distress—and over vigorous protests.

“I’ll tell you, what it is,” Jake snapped, surrendering to be pushed. “It’s just that I got thirty-thousand dollars I got to get rid of ’fore I die. That blasted niece of mine is just waitin’ for me to fall in my grave so’s she can get her hands on it, but I’ll fool her. I’ll get rid of it somehow, and then James can come ahead—”

“I’m not very well acquainted with your niece, but she seemed to be a very sincere and honest young lady,” Partridge insisted.

“Baloney! I had a brother once that had money too, an’ when he died you should have seen the way those rela­tives fought over it—it was like throwin’ an apple to‘ a bunch of hogs. They’re all dead now but me and my niece, but when I keel over it’ll be the same with her, much as she pretends she likes me. An’ if she thinks she’ll get it, she’s crazier’n a cow in a loco-weed patch. No, sir!”

They had arrived in front of Jake’s house—the last house in town. It set back off the street about a hundred feet and was surrounded by the tall elm trees. Very pretty—but also very dark, and Jake cast a furtive eye at the dense shad­ows more than once as he was wheeled up the path to his porch. He didn’t want to die before he found a way to get rid of that money, and Luke James might very well be lurk­ing in ambush.

But they reached the porch safe­ly, and although Partridge showed distinct desire to renew his acquain­tance with the lady of the house, Jake ordered him to be on his way, with parting advice that if he was smart he wouldn’t stop till he was clear out of the state.

Then Jake pushed open the door and wheeled himself in, and found that his niece had been watching for his arrival through the front window.

Mary Platt was just twenty years old, and she had something bewitch­ing about her for every one of the years; so many things, in fact, that it was one of Jake’s biggest fears that she might actually bewitch him into liking her. And now she was blushing, possibly from seeing the kind of com­pany Jake’d had on his way home, and also angry, for the odor of very bad whisky was quickly filling the room. It was a very bewitching com­bination.

“Jake Perkins, you’ve been drinking again! And you know very well it’s bad for your blood-pressure!”

‘‘Fat lot you care about my blood-pressure!” Jake snapped, looking ev­erywhere but at her to escape being bewitched, and very glad he had sent Partridge away. He wouldn’t want any man to see him getting a bawling-out from a danged upstart girl. “You’re jus’ hopin’ they carry me home one o’ these nights. That’s why you’re always mad when I show up alive.”

A sorcerous tear appeared in Mary’s eye, but she wiped it away quickly, stooped to kiss him on the forehead—causing him more anguish—and wheeled him into the living room.

“I’m sorry, Uncle,” she said softly. “Are you sleepy?”

“No,” he barked.

“Would you like me to read to you? We’ve never finished Pilgrim’s Progress.”

“The hell with that pilgrim—he ain’t progressin’ fast enough for me. I don’t want to hear no books. I want to sit here and think, an’ when I get sleepy I’ll go to sleep by the fire.”

He bent to release the catch on the door of the crow’s cage, whereupon the bird emerged, hopped several times around the room, and returned to the foot of his chair, where it stood and spoke these, famous words: “I’ll blow you to hell, you sidewinder! Ha, ha, ha! Sidewinder, sidewinder. Ha, ha!”

Mary plugged her ears and ran up­stairs before Satan could give further details.

* * * *

Jake wished his legs had been good, so that he could give Satan a kick in the direction he proposed to blow the sidewinder, but he settled on throwing a stick of firewood at him, making a clean miss, so that Satan was able to retire to a corner and amuse himself by picking at the bright buttons on a pair of Jake’s shoes.

Jake could have sworn, then, that he heard a gentle sobbing sound coming from the region of Mary’s bed­room, but he put this down as a product of his imagination, which was working hard at the moment.

For instance, suppose—he of course had no hope that any such-thing could possibly be true—but suppose that Mary did love him, the way she pre­tended to, instead of just wanting his money. Suppose she didn’t care a hoot about that thirty-thousand dollars he had in the bank—

Ah, but that was impossible. What was lovable about him—he was a crip­pled, cranky old man. Why, even the crow Satan hated him. And he thought about the world of Might Be, and thought how wonderful it would be, and how he would have loved his life in it. He shook his head mournfully and dozed away, and all the belliger­ence, the sharp voice, and the I-don’t-give-a-damn part of him slept. Only Satan remained to think, with his little eyes glittering brighter as the fire died, and finally he went to sleep too.

* * * *

Jake had a little garden behind his house. Nothing had ever grown in it but weeds and wire-grass, but he con­sidered his day wasted if part of it wasn’t spent in pushing his wheelchair around over that patch of earth and pecking at it with a hoe or rake. He was engaged in this industrious occupation, and computing his next year’s crop—which he very well knew would be nothing—when Mary, who should’have been at the school-house teaching the youngsters their Three R’s, came rushing into the garden out of breath and with her pretty hair all out of place—which might have made it even prettier.

“Uncle Jake! Oh, Uncle!”

“Well, what ails you?” Jake de­manded, making a pass with the rake at Satan, who was uncovering and eating his seeds.

“It’s all over town—that fight last night! Oh, why didn’t you tell me? Luke James is going around saying that he’s going to kill you—and Bob Partridge too.”

“Well, ain’t that what you want? This is your lucky day. As for Par­tridge, I tol’ him to get out of town, and if he’s dumb enough to stay, I guess he’ll have to carry his own coffin.”

Mary appeared about to dissolve into helpless tears, but maybe she remembered that this would only make her uncle worse than ever, for then he would try extra-hard to show that he didn’t care a fig. She instead became very firm and shook her finger threateningly under his nose.

“He can help himself, but you can’t. You’ve got to let me take you to the school-house where you’ll be safe with us.”

“I ain’t been in a school-house for sixty-five years and got along all right,” Jake retorted. He threw down his rake and glowered all around the garden, mad at the idea of anyone thinking he couldn’t take care of him­self. He guessed he’d done all right in the saloon last night when he’d saved Partridge from the licking of his life. And he guessed he could do all ­right now.

“Okay,” he said, glaring back at her. “I guess I might’s well disappint you and tell the truth. James ain’t goin’ to kill nobody; he’s the biggest liar in the country. There’s a streak down his back as yellow as his teeth. He’ll go braggin’ around town for a couple days, and then he’ll sneak out when nobody’s lookin’ and be forgotten about. Besides, I tol’ the sheriff to hang around this end of town tonight, an’ if he sees James comin’ this way, he’ll make short work of him. So there. You go back to school and torture them poor kids. There’s some kind of parents’ meetin’ there tonight, ain’t there?”

“Yes,” she said dimly.

“Well, you stay for it. You might’s well not come home ’cause I ain’t goin’ to get killed and you’ll just be disappointed again. Understand?”

“Yes,” she repeated and suddenly seized him and kissed him right square on the mouth. He finally had to push her away, and it’s a fact that he didn’t push too hard.

Anyway, he didn’t have a thing to say about it, and even if he’d had, he wouldn’t have got the chance. She turned and rushed back the way she had come, and he was left alone—unless Satan could be considered com­pany.

He cussed the crow until it came over and crawled into its cage, then he wheeled himself into the house. From the front room he could see the road that Luke James would have to come down if he intended to kill him. He wondered if Mary had believed the lies he had told her about James; but it was no matter, she was gone and that was all that she cared about.

Confound it—why did she have to kiss him like that? Why, a less shrewd man, or one who didn’t know as much about life as he did, might have been fooled into thinking she’d meant that kiss. And if he’d have been that kind of dumb cluck, he might have been sitting there right now making out a will that would have left her all his money.

But, fortunately, she hadn’t fooled him, and so he sat there without even the consolation of knowing someone loved him. And he even began to be impatient that the man who wanted to kill him was taking so long to come.

* * * *

At nine o’clock it was almost com­pletely dark outside, and he lit a lamp, keeping it low so that he could still see the road. Satan, most of whose sayings consisted of sentences repeat­edly hurled at him by Jake, noticed the change and observed, “One of these days I’ll wring your neck, you scrawny devil! Ha, ha, ha!”

“Another crack out of you and I’ll do it tonight,” Jake growled, and might have done just that if he hadn’t heard a soft step on the porch. He jerked his head up and saw the shad­owy form of a big man peering at him through the window of the door, and in another second James was in the room.

Jake had never noticed before that James was as ugly as he looked tonight, particularly in the poor light. The shadows accentuated his busted, humped nose and his mean little eyes. Across his mouth was a wide red welt where Jake’s heavy belt buckle had hit him the night before. He had a .44 in his right hand and a bag full of something in his left.

“So you was fool enough to stay here alone tonight,” he rasped, closing the door behind him.

“Sometimes I think I’m a pretty big fool,” Jake answered.

“You proved it tonight,” James said. “And I’m goin’ to teach you it ain’t nice to butt into my fights. I’ve wanted to blast that nosey head of yours open for a long time.”

“You takin’ your lunch along so you won’t have to owlhoot with’ an empty stomach?” Jake said, indicating the sack.

“That ain’t no lunch.” James grinned. “I took the trouble to jimmy my way into the bank and shoot that tin box open they got in there. There ain’t no one follerin’, so I mustn’t have been heard. That’s the money in that sack. Most of it’s your money.”

“You’re welcome to it,” Jake said, but a lump clogged up his throat. When it got to brass tacks, he guessed he’d rather Mary got his money than Luke James. And as he stared at the little round hole in the end of the .44, he realized with a pang that he did not want to die just yet. He wanted to live a little longer, to make sure about that kiss. Just a little longer.

He knew he’d have been dead in another second if it hadn’t been for Satan, who chose that moment to la­ment that he wanted to take his horse along to heaven.

James’ trigger finger relaxed a trifle. “Let that crow out. He’s an­other nosey one, just, like you. And I want to blow his head off, too.”

Jake’s eyes fired. “If anyone blows that crow’s head off, I’ll do it,” he snarled.

James didn’t argue. He kicked the front off the reed cage, scaring Satan half to death, but the crow shortly re­covered and strutted out onto the floor, smoothing his ruffled feathers with his beak.

Jake’s heart sank as James raised his gun to shoot Satan, but as he watched the bird, his heart began to rise again and beat very fast. Satan ignored the gun, but peered attentively at James’ face, cocking his head on one side in a meditative manner. Then he suddenly rose off his feet, beating his wings like a windmill, and dove straight for one of James’ gleaming eyes.

The gunman tried to leap out of the way of the sharp beak, but lost a piece of his nose to Satan as he shot wildly in the air. The crow was on him again instantly, and James, curs­ing, beat madly at it with his hands. He dropped his gun and fell against the wall as a sizable piece of his lip disappeared.

Jake grabbed the wheels of his chair and put all his strength into it as he ran his footrest into James’ shins—and the double onslaught was too much for the gunman. He col­lapsed howling to the floor, with Sa­tan still intent on his eye and Jake reaching for the Colt on the floor.

Jake’s hand closed around the butt just as James regained his feet and jumped at him; he jerked it up and fired, and the gunman fell again, this time to remain, at the foot of his chair.

Jake hardly had time to re­cover from the excitement before he heard more footsteps running to­ward the house. Quickly he grabbed the sack of money James had dropped and shoved it under the blanket that covered his legs; then he leaned back and closed his eyes.

Mary and Bob Partridge burst into the house a moment later—and Mary in­stantly fell on Jake, threw her arms around his heck, and began to sob hysterically, “He’s dead; he’s dead!”

Jake was getting drenched with tears. He partly opened one eye.

“Oooooh—where am I?” he groaned. “W-what happened?”

Instead of the tears stopping, they increased.

“Oh, Uncle! You’re alive! Oh, thank Heaven!”

“No, thank the devil,” Jake mut­tered.

In a minute everyone was calm but Bob Partridge, who looked very worried.

“I don’t know whether I ought to mention it or not after this first shock,” he said. “But they’ve discovered that the bank was robbed sometime this evening. The sheriff thought that either James or a cou­ple strangers who were in town this afternoon might have done it—but there isn’t any money on James. The other two are probably a long way from here by now. You may never see your money again.”

“This is too much,” Jake said, clos­ing both eyes and appearing to pass away, but opening them immediately thereafter. “This leaves me without a cent. I’ll starve to death.”

Bob Partridge fidgeted around in discomfort. “Oh, no you won’t,” he burst out suddenly. “I’m here to say that if Miss Mary Platt will have me, I’ll marry her and support you both!”

Mary smiled through her tears. “Even if I didn’t love you,” she said, “I think I’d marry you anyway.”

Jake was positively dumbfounded. He wanted to cuss good and loud, but held it back on account of the lady present. He looked at Satan, disconsolate and alone in a corner, staring at Luke James’ closed eyes.

“Hand that infernal crow here,” he growled.

“Please don’t hurt him, Uncle,” Mary said. “He uses bad language sometimes, but he’s really a very nice bird.”

“I ain’t a-goin’ to hurt him,” Jake snapped. “I just want to tell’ him that if he still wants an eye, he can have one of mine!”