Название: The Heart of Thunder Mountain
Автор: Edfrid A. Bingham
Издательство: Public Domain
Жанр: Зарубежная классика
isbn:
isbn:
“Nex’ time Thad Brinker ropes him. Thad’s the topnotch cow-puncher between the Black Hills an’ the Rio Grande, an’ he comes all the way f’m Dakoty when he hears the yarn about Sunnysides. Thad gits fourteen men to help him round up the bunch, an’ then he ropes the gold feller after a fight that’s talked about yit in the San Luis. He ropes him. An’ then what does Brinker do?”
He looked at Marion as if he dared her to make as many guesses as she wished. She shook her head.
“You ain’t the only one that’d never hit it,” he went on with satisfaction. “Thad ropes him, an’ while they lay there restin’, Sunnysides all tied up so he can’t move, an’ Brinker rubbin’ some bumps he’d come by in the fracas, just then the red comes up onto Sangre de Cristo. Brinker sees it–Ever seen the sunset color on Sangre de Cristo? No? That’s a pity, Miss. Indeed, that’s a pity. But you’re f’m Noo York, you said.”
He paused again, and Marion began to realize the full degree of her provinciality and ignorance. She was from New York. What a pity!
“Well,” said the cowboy, as if resolved to do the best he could in the circumstances, “sometimes–maybe three or four times a year–it’s weird. It’s religious. The white peaks turn red as blood–that’s why they’re called Sangre de Cristo. It’s Spanish for Blood of Christ. It makes you feel queer-like”–He paused a moment thoughtfully, watching the golden horse as it stepped quietly, lightly, with head high, just ahead of them. “The red comes onto Sangre de Cristo, an’ Brinker sees it. He looks at the blood on the peaks, an’ then at the gold horse lyin’ there all torn an’ dirty, an’ this is what Brinker does, an’ maybe he couldn’t help it. He ups an’ cuts the ropes, an’ Sunnysides’s off to his waitin’ bunch, an’ they all go snortin’ down the valley.”
There was a touch of awe in the man’s voice, and Marion felt a little of it too. She looked toward the serrated barrier of mountains, in the very middle of which stood old Thunder under his pall of cloud. Beyond lay San Luis–Sangre de Cristo–and what romance! Would she ever–Her eyes rested for a moment on the black pile that now, as always, fascinated and yet disturbed her.
“And you?” she said at length, turning to the cowboy.
“There wasn’t no red sunset this time,” the man answered, with a grim smile. “But we ain’t slep’ since,” he added, with a return of weariness.
“You caught him?” she asked admiringly.
“Us three.”
“But what are you doing with him here?”
“He’s sold, if we c’n find the man’t offered a thousand for him a year ago.”
“Who was he?”
But she knew already. Some swift flash of intuition told her there was but one man in Paradise Park who–
“His name’s Haig, an’ he’s–”
“Philip Haig!” she murmured.
“You know him?”
“Yes–no. That is, I’ve heard of him.”
It was on her lips,–the explanation that the men had passed the branch road leading to Haig’s ranch, that they were now riding away from it. But she hesitated. And why? She did not know then; but an hour later she would be reproaching herself bitterly for that moment’s indecision. The words were almost spoken, but something checked them; and before she could make up her mind to follow her first natural impulse it was too late.
The leader of the party turned in his saddle, and called to the man at Marion’s side, who rode quickly forward and joined his companions. There was a conversation inaudible to her ears, and while she still pondered over her inexplicable hesitation the cowboys and the golden horse, followed by Marion, approached the group of squat, unpainted houses that bore without apology the name of Paradise.
CHAPTER III
SETH HUNTINGTON’S OPPORTUNITY
It was Thursday, the one day of the week when Paradise needed no apologist. For on Thursdays the stage arrived from Tellurium, bringing the mail and, now and then, a passenger, and always a whiff of the outside world. No resident of Paradise Park would willingly have missed the arrival of the stage; and on this occasion fully two-thirds of the male population, with nine-tenths of the female, had already assembled. But the stage was not due for an hour or more. The women bargained and gossiped in Thompson’s store; the men, most of them, were gathered around a stiff game of freeze-out in the Square Deal Saloon; and only the score or more of saddle horses hitched in front of the store, and the dozen or so of buckboards and road wagons parked in the rear of it, showed that Paradise was in its weekly state of mild and patient expectancy.
So the three cow-punchers, the yellow horse, and Marion rode into Paradise without being seen or heard, and halted in front of the post-office.
“Hal-lo! Hallo!” sang out the leader of the cowboys. And then, with the petulance of one that is “all in”: “Is this a dam’ graveyard?”
A thin man in his shirt sleeves, with a whisky glass in one hand and a towel in the other, came to the door of the Square Deal Saloon. His pallid face had the look of settled weariness that is characteristic of keepers of such oases. Slavin had never, within the recollection of the oldest frequenter of his establishment, betrayed the slightest interest in anything. If there was a certain change in his expression as he looked out between narrowed eyelids into the garish sunlight it was one indicative of mild resentment at having been disturbed in his methodic occupation behind the bar. He saw with neither interest nor anticipation the three strangers, who ought to have had enough sense to dismount and walk in if they wanted anything.
“Well,” he began in a drawling and sarcastic tone, “what–”
It probably would have been a cautious and covered insult to the presumed intelligence of the strangers, if he had finished the question. But it died away on his thin lips. His fishy, blue eyes had caught at last the gleam of Sunnysides, half in eclipse behind the dull-hued cow ponies. For a few seconds he stared, while his mouth stood open, and his features slowly responded to the first emotion he had felt in years.
“Hell’s bobcats!” he yelled.
The glass slipped from his hand, and fell tinkling in pieces on the floor as he lunged out into the road.
In the saloon there was a moment of tense silence as the men there slowly realized that a phenomenon had occurred. Slavin was excited! The silence was followed by a hubbub of raised voices and a racket of overturned chairs and the scrape and thud of boots on the sanded floor. At that instant a woman in a pink calico dress, drawn by Slavin’s yell, came to the door of Thompson’s, and promptly screeched. СКАЧАТЬ