Starlight Riders Boxed-Set 50 Western Classics in One Edition. Ernest Haycox

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СКАЧАТЬ party drifted around the shack and were lost in the rising ground to the south. Lilly rose and returned to his blanket, piercing together diverse bits of information. Trono was a JIB man and Stubbins ran the 3Cross. Why all this fraternizing when the two outfits were in a state of armed truce? The answer was simple enough. Trono was knifing his boss. This night party was making a raid on JIB stock; they meant to break the old Octopus who was no longer able to fight for himself. Lilly shook his head in disgust. "I'd as lief sleep with a skunk as have any business with Trono. The doggone doublecrosser! If he ain't even loyal to his own outfit he ain't fit to be shot." Perhaps old Jim Breck was unscrupulous, but it was plain dirty to knife a man when he was down. And so he drifted off to a light slumber, mildly sympathizing with the man he had not long before defied.

      He had trained himself to wake at the slightest sound. Yet when he did wake it was at no sound, but rather from a sense of danger close by. Even before his eyes opened the nerves at the back of his neck sent a chilly warning through him and he groped for his gun, rolling swiftly aside from his blanket. Gray dawn had come and at his very feet, crouched, was the skinny Indian buck who had held his reins the day before, Pattipaws. The Indian had crept within five feet of Lilly without betraying himself and now as he saw Lilly rising up in self-defense he held out a hand, palm to the front, and the inscrutable copper-colored visage moved from side to side. "Pattipaws a frien'. You come with me. Boss he want to see you now."

      Lilly studied the Indian with mild indignation. "You shore had me in a hole, Smoke Face. First time I was ever trapped like that."

      "Indian way," said Pattipaws briefly. His faded, murky eyes played across Lilly's face for a long while. He put out his hand. "We frien's. Come."

      Lilly saddled and swung up. The Indian trotted over the ridge and reappeared on a flea-bitten paint pony, riding bareback. Together they galloped eastward toward the ranch. Rose dawn suffused the sky and the light, cold air carried the heavy aromatic smell of the sage. Lilly bent toward Pattipaws. "This a peace talk, Smoke Face, or are we raisin' the hatchet?"

      "Plenty peace, plenty trouble," said Pattipaws, his moccasined heels banging at the paint pony's flanks. "Boss, he dyin'."

      And when they reached the ranch and entered the house Lilly found old Jim Breck lying in bed, the massive face turned to the color of old ivory. But there was still a gleam in the heavy eyes; when he saw Lilly he smiled in a grim sort of way at his daughter and an elderly man who bent over him. "I'm playin' my last card," he muttered and for a moment was silent, collecting his energy. Short, clipped words issued from his strangely immobile lips.

      "Red, you come to this country lookin' fer trouble. Well, you're goin' to get it. I'm passin' out. You take my cards from now on. I'm makin' you foreman on the spot. Ain't time to tell you what to do, or what to watch for. But—you'll have to fight Trono. He's bent on bustin' the JIB. Act as if this place belonged to you. Jill understands. Take care of the kid. You promise?"

      The elderly man, who appeared to be a doctor, leaned over to mark Breck's flagging pulse and shook his head in warning. Lilly, plunged in a profound and wondering study, saw the girl fasten a sharp glance on him that had all the effect of a blow. Then she dismissed him with a pressure of her lips and turned toward her father, her hands tightly clenched and her whole body rigid. "Father, what is it you are doing?"

      "Yeah," assented Lilly. "You don't know me."

      "I've seen yore kind afore," muttered Breck. "Know you right down to the ground. I'm bankin' on you, Red. It's a go!"

      "It's a go," said Lilly in a gentle voice. "But there'll have to be a showdown with Trono. You don't know half o' what he's up to."

      "I can guess," replied Breck, grimly. His chest filled and swelled under the bed covers. "Damnation I'd like to be strong fer five minutes. I'd break him with my two hands!"

      "That," broke in the doctor, "is no way to leave the earth. You'd better get a little charity in your system, Jim. You'll need it."

      "I ain't no hypocrite," said Breck. "A man can't change himself in the last five minutes." His face turned toward Pattipaws who stood silently in the background. Of a sudden the room was filled with a guttural droning of the Bannock dialect, at the end of which the Indian stepped between Lilly and the girl, laying his hands on both and in turn tapping his own heart. Gratitude crept over Breck's face—a strange emotion for that heavy, granite countenance. "He'll stick when all the rest are gone," said the old man, pointing toward the Indian. "I fought this buck's tribe forty years ago. Made friends with 'em and quartered 'em on the ranch. They'll be leavin' now, but Pattipaws said he'd stick. He knows a few things that may be helpful when the shootin' starts. Now, Jill girl, I don't want you to feel harsh to'rds yore paw fer what he's told you in the last couple hours. When a man plays with a deck that's been marked by crooks, he's got to do the best he can. Doc, gimme a cigar."

      But the cigar was of no earthly use to him. He died before it touched his mouth. Pattipaws turned sharply and darted out; in a moment there was a long subdued wailing from the Indian quarters and when Lilly left the room he saw the Bannocks filing slowly away toward the pine forest, their travois raising dust in the fresh morning air. One by one the cowhands began to collect in front of the porch, staring at Lilly in the manner of men not pleased by what they saw. The Octopus had departed and with him went the iron discipline surrounding his name. Trouble brewed, even as the doctor emerged and spoke briefly. "He's on his way, boys. Said he wanted to be buried before noon. You know what to do."

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       "When a gent figgers to pick a quarrel with yuh, don't watch his eyes ner his gun arm. Keep yore orbs plastered in the middle o' his chest. He'll telegraph his nex' move from there."—Joe Breedlove.

      It was a hurried, brief funeral and of all the crowd only Jill, the doctor and Pattipaws seemed to show grief at the old Octopus' passing. The doctor, standing beside Lilly as the grave was dug—on a knoll near the house—spoke sadly. "He never was a hand for sentiment. Never gave any and never expected any, except with Jill. There ought to be a parson to say a few right words, but he wouldn't have it that way. Said he wanted to be out of the road so he wouldn't be cluttering the affairs of live folks. My boy, there was iron in old Jim!"

      It was wholly a man's affair. Jill had taken leave of her father in the bedroom and after that vanished somewhere in the dark recesses of the house. One of the hands who was something of a carpenter made a coffin and presently they were lowering it, with its great burden, into the earth. All of the crew stood about, with Theed Trono in the background. Lilly, turning his eyes on the foreman, saw nothing of sympathy in the hard, coarse face, nothing of regret. Rather, there was a kind of sardonic, illy-concealed triumph on his countenance as the coffin vanished from sight. It was an expression that, in varying shapes and degrees, could be seen among the others also. The doctor, conscious of his lack of Biblical knowledge, stooped and took up a handful of soil, letting it trickle beneath his fingers.

      "There ain't nothing I could say to speed Jim along," he murmured. "There ain't much he'd want me to say. He always figured he could fight his own way, here and hereafter. He never needed help, he never turned color when he was in a hard fix. It was always up and a-doing. He took his medicine and kept his mouth shut. He was hard, but he never double crossed a friend and he never pretended to be something he wasn't." The doctor pressed his lips tightly together and surveyed the crew with a defiant, unfriendly glance. "You won't ever see another like him—never. Good hunting, Jim."

      That was all. Pattipaws stretched his skinny hand toward the west and turned away. Trono stepped to the fore and pulled his gun, СКАЧАТЬ