Kitabı oku: «Alcatraz», sayfa 9

There was more angry demand than appeal in her voice, but Hervey knew he must give way. After all, the way to carry this thing through was to use the high hand as little as possible. Oliver Jordan would certainly wait a week before he returned.

"I sure want to be reasonable, Miss Jordan," he said. "I'm only acting in your father's interests. Of course he can stay for a week."

She whirled away from him with a glance of angry suspicion which softened instantly as she faced Red Jim.

"You will stay?" she pleaded.

Sullen pride drew Jim one way; the bright, eager eyes drew him another.

"As long as you want," he said gravely.

CHAPTER XV
THE KING

If men may to some degree be classed in categories of bird and beast, one like the eagle, another like the bear, some swinish, some elephantine, some boldly leonine, unquestionably Red Perris must be likened to the cat tribe. To some the comparison would have seemed most opportune, having seen him in restless action; but the same idea might have come to one who saw him lying prone on a certain hilltop in the western foothills of the Eagle mountains, unmoving hour by hour, his rifle shoved out before him among the dead grasses, his chin resting on the back of his folded hands, and always his attentive eyes roved from point to point over the landscape below him. A cat lies passive in this manner half a day, watching the gopher hole.

It was not the first or the second time he had spent the afternoon in this place. For nearly a week he had given the better part of every day to the vigil on this hilltop. All this for very good reasons. During ten days after his first coming to the ranch he tried the ordinary methods of hunting down wild horses, and with a carefully posted string of half a dozen horses, he twice attempted to run down the outlaw, but he had never come within more than the most distant and hazardous rifle range. To be sure he had fired some dozen shots during the pursuits but they had been random efforts at times when the red chestnut was flashing off in the distance, fairly walking away from the best mounts the hunter could procure. Having logically determined that it was not in the power of horse flesh burdened with the weight of a rider to come within striking distance of the stallion, Red Jim Perris passed from action to quiescence. If he could not outrun Alcatraz he would outwait him.

First he studied the habits of the new king of the Eagle Mountains, day by day following the trail. It was not hard to distinguish after he had once measured the mighty stride of Alcatraz in full gallop and he came to know to a hair's breath the distances which the chestnut stepped when he walked or trotted or loped or galloped or ran. More than that, he could tell by the print of the four hoofs, all of the same size, the same roundness—token so dear to the heart of a horseman! By such signs he identified old and new trails until he could guess the future by the past, until he could begin to read the character of the stallion. He knew, for instance, the insatiable curiosity with which the chestnut studied his wilderness and its inhabitants. He had seen the trail looping around the spot where the rattler's length had been coiled in the sand, or where a tentative hoof had opened the squirrel's hole. On a night of brilliant moonshine, he had watched through his glass while Alcatraz galloped madly, tossing head and tail, and neighing at a low-swooping owl.

Great, foolish impulses came to Alcatraz; he might gather his mares about him and lead them for ten miles at a terrific pace and with a blind destination; he might leave them and scout far and wide, alone, always at dizzy speed. As the hunter stayed longer by his puzzling task, he began to wonder if this sprang from mere running instinct, or knowledge that he must keep himself in the pink of condition. Like a man, the preferences of Alcatraz were distinctly formed and well expressed. He disliked the middle day and during this period sought a combination of wind and shade. Only in the morning and in the evening he ranged for pasture or for pleasure. Impulse still guided him. Now and again he wandered to the eastern or the western mountains, then far into the hot heart of the desert, then, with incredible boldness, he doubled back to the well-watered lands of the Jordan ranch, leaped a fence, followed by the mares to whom he had taught the art of jumping, and fed fat under the very eye of his enemies.

The boldness of these proceedings taught Perris what he already knew, that the stallion knew man and hated as much as he dreaded his former masters. These excursions were temptings of Providence, games of hazard. Perris, gambler by instinct himself, understood and appreciated, at the same time that his anger at being so constantly outwitted, outdistanced, grew hot. Then there remained no kindness, only desire to make the kill. His dreams had come to turn on one picture—Alcatraz cantering in range of the waiting rifle!

That dream haunted even his walking moments as he lay here on the hilltop, wondering if he had not been mistaken in selecting this place of all the range. Yet he had chosen it with care as one of the points of passage for Alcatraz during the stallion's wanderings to the four quarters of his domains and though since he took up his station here an imp of the perverse kept the stallion far away, the watcher remained on guard, baked and scorched by the midday sun, constantly surveying the lower hills nearby or sweeping more distant reaches with his glass. This day he felt the long vigil to be definitely a failure, for the sun was behind the western summits and the time of deepening shadows most unfavorable to marksmanship had come. He swung the glass for the last time to the south; it caught the glint of some moving creature.

He focused his attention, but the object disappeared. A full five minutes passed before it came out of the intervening valley but then, bursting over the hilltop, it swept enormous into the power of the glass—Alcatraz, and at full gallop!

There was no shadow of a doubt, for though it was the first time he had been able to watch the stallion at close hand he recognized the long and effortless swing of that gallop. Next he remembered those stories of the charmed life and the tales he had mocked at before now became possible truths. He caught up his gun to make sure, but when his left hand slipped under the barrel to the balance and the butt of the gun pulled into the hollow of his shoulder, he became of rocklike steadiness. Swinging the gun to the left he caught Alcatraz full in the readly circle of the sights and over his set teeth the lips curled in a smile; the trail had ended! The slightest movement of his finger would beckon the life out of that marauder, but as one who tastes the wine slowly, inhales its bouquet, places the vintage, even so Red Perris delayed to taste the fruition of his work. Pivoted on his left elbow, he swung the rifle with frictionless ease and kept the galloping stallion steadily in the center of the sight.

He smiled grimly now at those fables of the charmed life and drew a bead just over the heart. The chestnut was very near. Along the glorious slope of his shoulder Perris saw the long muscles playing with every stride, and what strides they were! He floated rather than galloped; his hoofs barely flicked the ground, and it seemed to Jim Perris a shameful thing to smash that mechanism. He did not love horses; he was raised in a land where they were too strictly articles of use. But even as a machine he saw in Alcatraz perfection.

Not the body, then. He would drive the bullet home into the brain, the cunning brain which had conceived and executed all the mischief the chestnut had worked. Along the shining neck, so imperiously arched, Perris swung the sights and rested his head, at last, just below the ears with the forelock blown back between them by the wind of running. Slowly his finger closed on the trigger. It seemed that in the silence Alcatraz had found a signal of danger for now he swung that imperious head about and looked full at Red Perris. By his own act he had changed the aim of the hunter to a yet more fatal target—the forehead.

The heart of Perris leaped even as it had stirred, more than once, when he had looked into the eyes of fighting men. Here was an equal pride, an equal fierceness looking forth at him. Then he remembered the six mares somewhere at the center of the guarding circle which Alcatraz now drew. What a dauntless courage was here in the brute mind which, knowing the power of man, dared to rob him, to defy him! Truly this was the king of horses meant for higher ends than to serve as target of a Winchester. Ay, he could make his owner a king among men. Mounted on the back of the chestnut no enemy could overtake him; from that winged speed none could escape. The back of Alcatraz might be a throne! He could end all that boundless strength by one pressure of his finger but was that indeed a true conquest? It was calling to his aid a trick, it was using an unfair advantage, it seemed to Perris; but suppose that he, the rider who had never yet failed in the saddle, were to sit on the stallion—there would be a battle for the Gods to witness!

It was madness, sheer madness; it was throwing away the labor of the patient days of waiting and working; but to Perris it seemed the only thing to do. He leaped to his feet and brandished the gleaming rifle.

"Go it, boy!" he shouted. "We'll meet again!"

One snort from Alcatraz—then he changed to a red streak flashing down the hollow.

Before the stallion was out of sight, a cry rang down the wind. It was chopped off by the crack of a rifle, and Lew Hervey spurred from behind a neighboring hill and plunged after Alcatraz pumping shot on shot at the fugitive. In a frenzy Perris jerked his own gun to the shoulder and drew down on the pursuer, but the red anger cleared from his mind as he caught the burly shoulders of Hervey in the sights. He lowered the rifle with a grim feeling that he had never before been so close to a murder.

A moment later he began to chuckle behind his set teeth. No wonder they credited the chestnut with a charmed life. As he raced away gaining a yard at every leap, he swerved like a jackrabbit from side to side. Perhaps the deadly hum of bullets on many another chase had taught him this trick of dodging, but beyond all doubt when Hervey returned to the ranch that night he would have a tale of mystery. To preserve his self-respect as a good marksman, what else could he do?

In the meantime pursued and pursuer scurried out of sight beyond a hill; the gun barked far away and the echoes murmured lightly from the hollows. Then Perris turned his back and trudged homewards.

CHAPTER XVI
RED PERRIS: ADVOCATE

He did not choose to live in the ranch because of Hervey and because it was too far removed from the scene of action. Instead, he selected a shack stumbling with age on the west slope of the Eagle Mountains. From his door many a time, with his glass, he picked out the shining form of Alcatraz and the mares in the distance; he had even been able to follow the maneuvers of the outlaw on several occasions when Hervey and his men pursued with relays of horses, and on the whole he felt that the site was such a position as a good general must prefer, being behind the lines but with a view which enabled him to survey the whole action. His quarters consisted of a single room while a shed leaned against the back wall with one space for a horse, the other portion of the shed being used as a mow for hay and grain.

It was the beginning of the long, still time of the mountain twilight when Red Perris climbed to the clearing in which the cabin stood. Ordinarily he would have set about preparing supper before the coming of the dark, but now he watered and saddled his cowpony, a durable little buckskin, and with a touch of the spurs sent him at a pitching gallop down the slope.

It was not a kindly thing to do but Red Perris was not a kindly man with horses and though he knew that it is hard on the shoulders of even a mustang to be ridden downhill rapidly, he kept on with unabated speed until he broke onto the well-established trail which led to the Jordan house. Then a second touch of the spurs brought the pony close to a full gallop. In fact, Perris was riding against time, for he guessed that Lew Hervey, after quitting the trail of Alcatraz, would veer straight towards the home place and there lay before Marianne an account of how the chosen hunter had allowed the stallion to slip through his hands. This, together with the fact that his week was up was enough to bring about his discharge, for he had seen sufficient of the girl to guess her fiery temper and he knew that she must have been harshly tried during the last weeks by his lack of success and by the continual sneers and mockery which the foreman and his followers had directed at the imported horse-catcher. Before sunset of that day he would have welcomed his discharge; now it loomed before him as the greatest of all possible catastrophes.

Soon he was swinging down an easy road with the tilled lands on one side, the pastures and broad ranges on the other, and even in the dim light he guessed the wealth which the estate was capable of producing. Even the deliberate mismanagement of Hervey was barely able to create a deficit and Perris grew hot when he thought of the foreman. His own dislikes found swift expression and were as swiftly forgotten; that a grown ranchman could nourish resentment towards a girl, and that because she was attempting to take charge of her own property, was well beyond his comprehension. For he had that quality which is common to all born leaders: he understood in what good and faithful service should consist; with this addition, that he was far more fitted to command than to be commanded.

It may be seen that there was a background of gloomy thought in his mind, yet from time to time he startled the mustang to a harder pace by a ringing burst of song. Remembering the windlike gallop of Alcatraz, it seemed to him that the buckskin was hardly keeping to a lope—as a matter of fact the cow pony was being ridden to the verge of exhaustion. So the songs of Perris kept the rhythm of the departed hoofs of wild Alcatraz and the shining form of the stallion wavered and danced in his mind.

The ranch building grew out of the dun evening and he smiled at the sight. The bank roll of Marianne had not been thick enough to enable her to do the reconstruction she desired, but at least she had been able to hire a corps of painters, so that the drab, weathered frame structures had been lifted into crimson and green roofs, white yellow, and flaming orange walls. "A little color is a dangerous thing," Marianne had said, somewhat overwisely, "but a great deal of it is pretty certain to be pleasing." So she had let her fancy run amuck, so to speak, and behind the merciful screen of trees there was now what Lew Hervey profanely termed: "A whole damn rainbow gone plumb crazy." Even Marianne at times had her doubts, but from a distance and by dint of squinting, she was usually able to reduce the conglomerate to a tolerably harmonious whole. "It's a promise of changes to come," she told herself. "It's a milestone pointing towards new goals." But the milestone set Perris chuckling. Yonder a scarlet roof burned through the shadows above moonwhite walls—that was a winter-shed for cows. Straight before him were the hot orange sides of the house itself. He dismounted at the arched entrance and walked into the patio.

The first thing that Perris heard was the most provocative and sneering tone of the foreman, and cursing the slowness of the buckskin, he realized that he had been beaten to his goal. He paused in the shadow of the arch to take stock of his position. The squat arcade of 'dobe surrounding the patio was lighted vaguely by a single lantern at his left. It barely served to make the shadowy outlines of the house visible, the heavy arches, roughly sketched doorways, and hinted at the forms of the cowpunchers who were ranged under the far arcade for their after-dinner smoke, all eagerly listening to the dialogue between the mistress and the foreman. When a breath of wind made the flame jump in the lantern chimney a row of grinning faces stood out from the shadow.

Marianne sat in a deep chair which made her appear girlishly slight. The glow of the reading lamp on the table beside her fell on her hair, cast a highlight on her cheek, and showed her hand lying on the open book in her lap, palm up. There was something about that hand which spoke to Perris of helpless surrender, something more in the gloomy eyes which looked up to the foreman where he leaned against a pillar. The voice drawled calmly to an end: "And that's what he is, this gent you got to finish what me and the rest started. Here he is to tell you that I've spoke the truth."

With the uncanny Western keenness of vision, Hervey had caught sight of the approaching Perris from the corner of his eye. He turned now and welcomed the hunter with a wave of his hand. Marianne drew herself up with her hands clasped together in her lap and though in this new attitude her face was in complete shadow, Perris felt her eyes burning out at him. His dismissal was at hand, he knew, and then the carelessly defiant speech which was forming in his throat died away. Sick at heart, he realized that he must cringe under the hand which was about to strike and be humble under the very eye of Hervey. He was no longer free and the chain which held him was the conviction that he could never be happy until he had met and conquered wild Alcatraz, that he was as incomplete as a holster without a gun or a saddle without stirrups until the speed and the great heart of the stallion were his to control and command.

"I've heard everything from Lew Hervey," said the girl, in that low strained voice which a woman uses when her self-control is barely as great as her anger, "and I suppose I don't need to say that after these days of waiting, Mr. Perris, I'm disappointed. I shall need you no longer. You are free to go without giving notice. The experiment has been—unfortunate."

He felt that she had searched as carefully as her passion permitted to find a word that would sting him. The hot retort leaped to his lips but he closed his teeth tight over it. A vision of Alcatraz with the wind in tail and mane galloped back across his memory and staring bitterly down at the girl he reflected that it was she who had brought him face to face with the temptation of the outlaw horse.

Then he found that he was saying stupidly: "I'm sure sorry, Miss Jordan. But I guess being sorry don't help much."

"None at all. And—we won't talk any longer about it, if you please. The thing is done; another failure. Mr. Hervey will give you your pay. You can do the rest of your talking to him."

She lowered her head; she opened the book; she adjusted it carefully to the light streaming over her shoulder; she even summoned a faint smile of interest as though her thoughts were a thousand miles from this petty annoyance and back in the theme of the story. Perris, blind with rage, barely saw the details, barely heard the many-throated chuckle from the watchers across the patio. Never in his life had he so hungered to answer scorn with scorn but his hands were tied. Alcatraz he must have as truly as a starved man must have food; and to win Alcatraz he must live on the Jordan ranch. He could not speak, or even think, for that maddening laughter was growing behind him; then he saw the hand of Marianne, as she turned a page, tremble slightly. At that his voice came to him.

"Lady, I can't talk to Hervey."

She answered without looking up, and he hated her for it.

"Are you ashamed to face him?"

"I'm afraid to face him."

That, indeed, brought her head up and let him see all of her rage translated into cruel scorn.

"Really afraid? I don't suppose I should be surprised."

He accepted that badgering as martyrs accept the anguish of fire.

"I'm afraid that if I turn around and see him, Miss Jordan, I ain't going to stop at words."

The foreman acted before she could speak. The laughter across the patio had stopped at Perris' speech; plainly Hervey must not remain quiescent. He dropped his big hand on the shoulder of Perris.

"Look here, bucco," he growled, "You're tolerable much of a kid to use man-sized talk. Turn around."

He even drew Perris slightly towards him, but the latter persisted facing the girl even though his words were for the foreman. She was growing truly frightened.

"Tell Hervey to take his hand off me," said the horse-breaker. "He's old enough to know better!"

If his words needed amplification it could be found in the wolfish malevolence of his lean face or in the tremor which shook him; the thin space of a thought divided him from action. Marianne sprang from her chair. She knew enough of Hervey to understand that he could not swallow this insult in the presence of his cowpunchers. She knew also by the sudden compression of his lips and the white line about them that her foreman felt himself to be no match for this tigerish fighter. She thrust between them. Even in her excitement she noticed that Hervey's hand came readily from the shoulder of Perris. The older man stepped back with his hand on his gun, but in a burst of pitying comprehension she knew that it was the courage of hopelessness. She swung about on Perris, all her control gone, and the bitterness of a thousand aggravations and all her failures on the ranch poured out in words.

"I know your kind and despise it. You practice with your guns getting ready for your murders which you call fair fights. Fair fights! As well race a thoroughbred against a cowpony! You wrong a man and then bully him. That's Western fair play! But I swear to you, Mr. Perris, that if you so much as touch your weapon I'll have my men run you down and whip you out of the mountains!"

Her outbreak gave him, singularly, a more even poise. There was never a fighter who was not a nervous man; there was never a fighter who in a crisis was not suddenly calm.

"Lady," he answered, "you think you know the West, but you don't. If me and Hervey fell out there wouldn't be a man yonder across the patio that'd lift a hand till the fight was done. That ain't the Western way."

He had spoken much more than he was assured of. He had even sensed, behind him, the rising of the cowpunchers as the girl talked but at this appeal to their spirit of fair-play they settled down again.

He went on, speaking so that every man in the patio could hear: "If I won, they might tackle me one by one and we'd have it out till a better man beat me fair and square. But mobs don't jump one man, lady—not around these parts unless he's stole a hoss!"

"I don't ask no help," said Lew Hervey, but his voice was husky and uneven. "I'll stand my ground with any man, gun-fighter or not!"

"Please be quiet and let me handle this affair," said the girl. "As a matter of fact, it's ended. If you won't take the money from Mr. Hervey, I'll pay it to you myself. How much?"

"Nothing," said Red Perris.

"Are you going to give me an example of wounded virtue?" cried Marianne, white with contempt.

He was as pale as she, and taking off his hat he began to dent and re-dent its four sides. The girl, looking at that red shock of hair and the lowered eyes, guessed for the first time that he was suffering an agony of humiliation. Half of her anger instantly vanished and remembering her passion of the moment before, she began to wonder what she had said. In the meantime, shrugging his shoulders with a forced indifference, Hervey crossed the patio and she was aware that he was received in silence—no murmurs of congratulation for the manner in which he had borne himself during the interview.

"I got to ask you to gimme about two minutes of listening, Miss Jordan. Will you do it?"

"At least I won't stop you. Say what you please, Mr. Perris."

She wished heartily that she could have spoken with a little show of relenting but she had committed herself to coldness. In her soul of souls she wanted to bid him take a chair and tell her frankly all about it, assure him that after a moment of blind anger she had never doubted his straightforward desire to serve her. He began to speak.

"It's this way. I come out here to shoot a hoss, and I've worked tolerable hard to get in rifle range. I guess Hervey has been saying that I've got into shooting distance a dozen times but it ain't true. He happened to be sneaking about to-day, and he saw Alcatraz come close by me for the first time."

He paused. "I'll give you my word on that."

"You don't need to" said the girl, impetuously.

His eyes flashed up at her, at that, and he stood suddenly straight as though she had given him the right to stop cringing and talk like a man. What on earth, she wondered, could have forced the man to such humility? It made her shrink as one might on seeing an eagle cower before a wren. As for Perris, his resentment was in no wise abated by her friendliness. She had given him some moments of torture and the memory of that abasement would haunt him many a day. He mutely vowed that she should pay for it, and went on: "I sure wanted to sing when I caught Alcatraz in the sights. I pulled a bead on him just behind the shoulder but I could see the muscles along his shoulders working and it was a pretty sight, Miss Jordan."

She nodded, frowning in the intentness with which she followed him. She had thought of him as one with the careless, mischievous soul of a child but now, in quick, deep glances, she reached to profounder things.

"I held the bead," he kept repeating, his glance going blankly past her as he struggled to find words for the strange experience, "but then I saw his ribs going in and out. He was big where the cinches would run, you see, and I began to understand where he got that wind of his that never gives out. Besides, I somehow got to thinking about his heart under the ribs, lady, and I figured it kind of low to stop all the life in him with a bullet. So I swung my bead up along his neck—he's got a long neck and that means a long stride—till I came plump on his head, and just then he swung his head and gave me a look."

He breathed deeply, and then: "It was like jumping into cold water all of a sudden. I felt hollow inside. And then all at once I knew they'd never been a hoss like him in the mountains. I knew he was an outlaw. I knew he was plumb bad. But I knew he was a king, lady, and I couldn't no more shoot him that I could lie behind a bush and shoot a man." He was suddenly on fire.

"Looked to me like he was my hoss. Like he'd been planned for me. I wanted him terrible bad, the way you want things when you're a kid—the way you want Christmas the day before, when it don't seem like you could wait for tomorrow."

"But—he's a man-killer, Mr. Perris. I've seen it!"

His hand went out to her and she listened in utter amazement while he pleaded with all his heart in his voice.

"Lemme have a chance to make him my hoss, murders or not! Lemme stay here on the ranch and work, because they's no other good place for hunting him. I know you want them mares, but some day I'll get my rope on him and then I swear I'll break him or he'll break me. I'll break him, ride him to death, or he'll pitch me off and finish me liked he finished Cordova. But I know I can handle him. I sure feel it inside of me, lady! Pay? I don't want pay! I'll work for nothing. If I had a stake, I'd give it to you for a chance to keep on trying for him. I know I'm asking a pile. You want the mares and you can get them the minute Alcatraz is dropped with a bullet,—but I tell you straight, he's worth all of 'em—all six and more!"

A light came over his face. "Miss Jordan, lemme stay on and try my luck and if I get him and break him, I'll turn him over to you. And I tell you: he's the wind on four feet."

"You'll do all this and then give him to me when he's gentled and broken—if that can be done? Then why do you want him?"

"I want to show him that he's got a master. He's played with me and plumb fooled me all these weeks. I want to get on him and show him he's beat." His fierce joy in the thought was contagious. "I want to make him turn when I pull on the reins. I'll have him start when I want to start and stop when I want to stop. I'll make him glad when I talk soft to him and shake when I talk hard. He's made a fool of me; I'll make a fool and a show of him. Lady, will you say yes?"

He had swept her off her feet and with a mind full of a riot of imaginings—the frantic stallion, the clinging rider, the struggle for superiority—she breathed: "Yes, yes! A thousand times yes—and good luck, Mr. Perris."

He tossed his arms above his head and cried out joyously.

"Lady, it's more'n ten years of life to me!"

"But wait!" she said, suddenly aware of Hervey, lingering in the background. "I haven't the power to let you stay. It's Mr. Hervey who has authority while my father is away."

The lips of Red Jim twitched to a sneering malevolence mingled with gloom.

"It's up to him?" he echoed. "Then I might of spared myself all of this talk."

It would all be over in a moment. The foreman would utter the refusal. Red Perris would be in his saddle and bound towards the mountains. And that thought gave Marianne sudden insight into the fact that the Valley of the Eagles would be a drear, lonely place without Red Jim.

"You don't know Mr. Hervey," she broke in before the foreman could speak for himself. "He'll bear no malice to you. He's forgotten that squabble over—"

"Sure I have," said Lew Hervey. "I've forgotten all about it. But the way I figure, Miss Jordan, is that Perris is like a chunk of dynamite on the ranch. Any day one of the boys may run into him and there'll be a killing. They're red-hot against him. They might start for him in a gang one of these days, for all I know. For his own sake, Perris had better leave the Valley."