The Classic Humor MEGAPACK ®. Эдгар Аллан По

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СКАЧАТЬ in the door of the consulate, he was still in a condition to extend the hospitality and courtesy due from the representative of a great nation.

      “Don’t disturb yourself,” said the Kid easily. “I just dropped in. They told me it was customary to light at your camp before starting in to round up the town. I just came in on a ship from Texas.”

      “Glad to see you, Mr. ——,” said the consul.

      The Kid laughed.

      “Sprague Dalton,” he said. “It sounds funny to me to hear it. I’m called the Llano Kid in the Rio Grande country.”

      “I’m Thacker,” said the consul. “Take that cane-bottom chair. Now if you’ve come to invest, you want somebody to advise you. These dingies will cheat you out of the gold in your teeth if you don’t understand their ways. Try a cigar?”

      “Much obliged,” said the Kid, “but if it wasn’t for my corn shucks and the little bag in my back pocket, I couldn’t live a minute.” He took out his “makings,” and rolled a cigarette.

      “They speak Spanish here,” said the consul. “You’ll need an interpreter. If there’s anything I can do, why, I’d be delighted. If you’re buying fruit lands or looking for a concession of any sort, you’ll want somebody who knows the ropes to look out for you.”

      “I speak Spanish,” said the Kid, “about nine times better than I do English. Everybody speaks it on the range where I come from. And I’m not in the market for anything.”

      “You speak Spanish?” said Thacker thoughtfully. He regarded the Kid absorbedly.

      “You look like a Spaniard, too,” he continued. “And you’re from Texas. And you can’t be more than twenty or twenty-one. I wonder if you’ve got any nerve.”

      “You got a deal of some kind to put through?” asked the Texan, with unexpected shrewdness.

      “Are you open to a proposition?” said Thacker.

      “What’s the use to deny it?” said the Kid. “I got into a little gun frolic down in Laredo and plugged a white man. There wasn’t any Mexican handy. And I come down to your parrot-and-monkey range just for to smell the morning-glories and marigolds. Now, do you sabe?”

      Thacker got up and closed the door.

      “Let me see your hand,” he said.

      He took the Kid’s left hand, and examined the back of it closely.

      “I can do it,” he said excitedly. “Your flesh is as hard as wood and as healthy as a baby’s. It will heal in a week.”

      “If it’s a fist fight you want to back me for,” said the Kid, “don’t put your money up yet. Make it gun work, and I’ll keep you company. But no barehanded scrapping, like ladies at a tea-party, for me.”

      “It’s easier than that,” said Thacker. “Just step here, will you?”

      Through the window he pointed to a two-story white-stuccoed house with wide galleries rising amid the deep green tropical foliage on a wooded hill that sloped gently from the sea.

      “In that house,” said Thacker, “a fine old Castilian gentleman and his wife are yearning to gather you into their arms and fill your pockets with money. Old Santos Urique lives there. He owns half the gold-mines in the country.”

      “You haven’t been eating loco weed, have you?” asked the Kid.

      “Sit down again,” said Thacker, “and I’ll tell you. Twelve years ago they lost a kid. No, he didn’t die—although most of ‘em here do from drinking the surface water. He was a wild little devil, even if he wasn’t but eight years old. Everybody knows about it. Some Americans who were through here prospecting for gold had letters to Señor Urique, and the boy was a favorite with them. They filled his head with big stories about the States; and about a month after they left, the kid disappeared, too. He was supposed to have stowed himself away among the banana bunches on a fruit steamer, and gone to New Orleans. He was seen once afterward in Texas, it was thought, but they never heard anything more of him. Old Urique has spent thousands of dollars having him looked for. The madam was broken up worst of all. The kid was her life. She wears mourning yet. But they say she believes he’ll come back to her some day, and never gives up hope. On the back of the boy’s left hand was tattooed a flying eagle carrying a spear in his claws. That’s old Urique’s coat of arms or something that he inherited in Spain.”

      The Kid raised his left hand slowly and gazed at it curiously.

      “That’s it,” said Thacker, reaching behind the official desk for his bottle of smuggled brandy. “You’re not so slow. I can do it. What was I consul at Sandakan for? I never knew till now. In a week I’ll have the eagle bird with the frog-sticker blended in so you’d think you wereborn with it. I brought a set of the needles and ink just because I was sure you’d drop in some day, Mr. Dalton.”

      “Oh, hell,” said the Kid. “I thought I told you.”

      “All right, ‘Kid,’ then. It won’t be that long. How does Señorito Urique sound, for a change?”

      “I never played son any that I remember of,” said the Kid. “If I had any parents to mention they went over the divide about the time I gave my first bleat. What is the plan of your round-up?”

      Thacker leaned back against the wall and held his glass up to the light.

      “We’ve come now,” said he, “to the question of how far you’re willing to go in a little matter of the sort.”

      “I told you why I came down here,” said the Kid simply.

      “A good answer,” said the consul. “But you won’t have to go that far. Here’s the scheme. After I get the trade-mark tattooed on your hand I’ll notify old Urique. In the meantime I’ll furnish you with all of the family history I can find out, so you can be studying up points to talk about. You’ve got the looks, you speak the Spanish, you know the facts, you can tell about Texas, you’ve got the tattoo mark. When I notify them that the rightful heir has returned and is waiting to know whether he will be received and pardoned, what will happen? They’ll simply rush down here and fall on your neck, and the curtain goes down for refreshments and a stroll in the lobby.”

      “I’m waiting,” said the Kid. “I haven’t had my saddle off in your camp long, pardner, and I never met you before; but if you intend to let it go at a parental blessing, why, I’m mistaken in my man, that’s all.”

      “Thanks,” said the consul. “I haven’t met anybody in a long time that keeps up with an argument as well as you do. The rest of it is simple. If they take you in only for a while it’s long enough. Don’t give ‘em time to hunt up the strawberry mark on your left shoulder. Old Urique keeps anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 in his house all the time in a little safe that you could open with a shoe buttoner. Get it. My skill as a tattooer is worth half the boodle. We go halves and catch a tramp steamer for Rio Janeiro. Let the United States go to pieces if it can’t get along without my services. Que dice, señor?”

      “It sounds to me!” said the Kid, nodding his head. “I’m out for the dust.”

      “All right, then,” said Thacker. “You’ll СКАЧАТЬ