Название: The Heart of Thunder Mountain
Автор: Edfrid A. Bingham
Издательство: Public Domain
Жанр: Зарубежная классика
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Marion’s enjoyment of this exciting scene was tinged with a vague uneasiness. She had watched the men come tumbling out of the Square Deal Saloon and the women swarming from Thompson’s store, and had felt a curious relief at seeing neither Seth nor Claire among them. Though she could not have given any reason for her satisfaction, their absence, and Seth’s especially, seemed to her a piece of rare good fortune. Haig’s warning–“Tell him he’s a fool to anger me!”–was still echoing at the back of her brain; her recent act of incomprehensible errancy still troubled and perplexed her; and try as she would, she was unable to suppress the feeling that she had become inextricably entangled in the feud between Haig and Huntington. She was not yet ready to face Huntington. Thank Heaven, he was not there!
But at the very instant of her self-congratulation, and when she was just turning her attention again to the hubbub around the golden outlaw, her eye was suddenly caught, across the heads of the crowd, by a figure that caused her to stiffen in the saddle.
“Seth!” she gasped.
He came striding rapidly from the direction of the blacksmith’s, the most distant of the group of buildings,–a large and heavy but well-built man, whose black, short-cropped beard and bushy, overhanging eyebrows gave him a somewhat truculent expression, which was heightened by his rough and domineering demeanor. He was better dressed, or more carefully at least, than any of the other men. He wore a coat and trousers of dark-brown corduroy, a light-gray flannel shirt with a flowing black tie, and a wide-brimmed Stetson hat. His belt, under the unbuttoned coat, was of elaborately stamped leather, with a pocket at one side from which a heavy, gold watch chain was looped to a silver ring, and with an ornate holster at the other where the black butt of a revolver was visible as he moved.
He shouldered his way through the crowd in the heedless manner of most bulky men, who seldom realize how much space they take that properly belongs to others. At six feet from the golden horse he halted, and surveyed him with shining eyes.
“Sunnysides, eh?” he said, turning toward the nearest of the strangers.
“The’s only one,” replied the cow-puncher.
“Who caught him this time?”
“Us three. That’s Jim Raley, with the busted arm. That other is Jud Smith, My name’s Larkin. We belong to the X bar O outfit on Lost Soldier Creek.”
“Second outfit below Forty-Mile,” said Huntington, familiarly.
“Right!”
“Sanders still foreman?”
“Yes.”
“Then what are you doing with that horse up here?”
The cow-puncher grinned.
“I ketch your meanin’,” he replied. “It’s like this. Sanders chased Sunnysides three seasons, an’ thought he’d roped him. But all he gits ’s a cracked leg, an’ not a yeller hair of the slippery beast. Then us three takes on the job–not presumin’ to be better’n Sanders, but hopin’ for luck. It comes our way, an’ there you are. We offer him to Sanders–for a price, natch’rally–but he says he don’t believe in ghosts, an’ we c’n go to hell with him.”
“You must have missed the road. This is Paradise,” said Huntington.
The crowd roared its appreciation.
“The’ ain’t much in names,” observed Larkin testily.
The crowd laughed again, though, of course, less heartily.
“Well, Heaven or Hell,” said Huntington, “is the horse for sale?”
“He is–if he ain’t sold already.”
“How’s that?”
“We’re offered a price for him–if it still holds good. That’s why we’ve come to Paradise–an’ no other reason, believe me!”
“How much?”
“Thousand.”
There was a stir in the crowd.
“That’s some price for a bronco,” said Huntington, with an assumed indifference.
“It sure is–if you’re talkin’ about a bronco,” retorted the cow-puncher.
There was a brief silence, in which all eyes were turned again upon the golden horse, standing motionless but alert, as if keenly alive to all that passed. The common ponies around him stamped, and champed their bits, and moved restlessly in their places, but Sunnysides remained calm and observant, with all the dignity and contempt of a captive patrician in a crowd of yokels.
Marion saw admiration and desire growing in Seth’s eyes, and knew that her foreboding had not been without reason.
“And who’s paying a thousand dollars for him?” asked Huntington.
“Haig’s his name, Philip Haig,” answered Larkin. “Know him?”
If Larkin had been a little nettled by the levity of the Paradisians he now had his revenge, though much to his surprise, in the extraordinary effect produced by his simple announcement. The smiles faded from the faces assembled around him; significant glances were exchanged; and there followed a silence so deep that the murmur of the Brightwater could be heard quite clearly across the meadows. Then there was a rustling movement in the crowd, and every face, as if by a common impulse, or at a given signal, was turned toward Huntington.
Marion was not sure of the feelings of the others, but there could be no mistake in what she read in Huntington’s black countenance. She was not only frightened, but surprised and pained. For all his coarseness and crudity, she had until to-day believed him to be innately gentle, with only a rough and ungracious exterior. She had seen him always tender with Claire, whom undoubtedly he loved with all the best there was in him. But now she perceived the other side of his character, which she had indeed divined at first, but which she had firmly, on account of Claire, refused to acknowledge. An unworthy passion glowed in his eyes; his features were distorted by an expression of mingled cunning and hate; and his head somehow seemed to sink lower between his shoulders as he leaned slightly forward, studying the face of the cow-puncher. Then swiftly he took himself in hand, and masked his passions under an air of careless badinage that was, for the moment, suited to his purpose.
“But I don’t just understand,” he drawled insinuatingly. “Haig hasn’t been away from the Park lately–unless he’s gone an’ come by night.”
A snicker or two, and one loud guffaw rewarded him for this insult to his absent foe. But Marion felt the color rising to her cheeks.
“It’s a year ago he’s seen him, ’way off, shinin’ in the sun,” explained Larkin. “He stops at the X bar O, an’ says he’ll give a thousand for him.”
“So that’s all you’ve got to go on, is it?” sneered Huntington.
“Yes,” answered Larkin uneasily.
“An’ you think СКАЧАТЬ