Mrs. Skagg's Husbands and Other Stories. Bret Harte
Читать онлайн книгу.
replied Tommy, with business-like gravity.
“Well,” said Johnson, after a deliberation commensurate with the magnitude of the transaction, “ef you win, call it a hundred and eighty thousand, round. War’s the keerds?”
They were in an old tin box in a crevice of a rock above his head. They were greasy and worn with service. Johnson dealt, albeit his right hand was still uncertain,—hovering, after dropping the cards, aimlessly about Tommy, and being only recalled by a strong nervous effort. Yet, notwithstanding this incapacity for even honest manipulation, Mr. Johnson covertly turned a knave from the bottom of the pack with such shameless inefficiency and gratuitous unskilfulness, that even Tommy was obliged to cough and look elsewhere to hide his embarrassment. Possibly for this reason the young gentleman was himself constrained, by way of correction, to add a valuable card to his own hand, over and above the number he legitimately held.
Nevertheless, the game was unexciting, and dragged listlessly. Johnson won. He recorded the fact and the amount with a stub of pencil and shaking fingers in wandering hieroglyphics all over a pocket diary. Then there was a long pause, when Johnson slowly drew something from his pocket, and held it up before his companion. It was apparently a dull red stone.
“Ef,” said Johnson, slowly, with his old look of simple cunning,—“ef you happened to pick up sich a rock ez that, Tommy, what might you say it was?”
“Don’t know,” said Tommy.
“Mightn’t you say,” continued Johnson, cautiously, “that it was gold, or silver?”
“Neither,” said Tommy, promptly.
“Mightn’t you say it was quicksilver? Mightn’t you say that ef thar was a friend o’ yourn ez knew war to go and turn out ten ton of it a day, and every ton worth two thousand dollars, that he had a soft thing, a very soft thing,—allowin’, Tommy, that you used sich language, which you don’t?”
“But,” said the boy, coming to the point with great directness, “DO you know where to get it? have you struck it, Uncle Ben?”
Johnson looked carefully around. “I hev, Tommy. Listen. I know whar thar’s cartloads of it. But thar’s only one other specimen—the mate to this yer—thet’s above ground, and thet’s in ‘Frisco. Thar’s an agint comin’ up in a day or two to look into it. I sent for him. Eh?”
His bright, restless eyes were concentrated on Tommy’s face now, but the boy showed neither surprise nor interest. Least of all did he betray any recollection of Bill’s ironical and gratuitous corroboration of this part of the story.
“Nobody knows it,” continued Johnson, in a nervous whisper,—“nobody knows it but you and the agint in ‘Frisco. The boys workin’ round yar passes by and sees the old man grubbin’ away, and no signs o’ color, not even rotten quartz; the boys loafin’ round the Mansion House sees the old man lyin’ round free in bar-rooms, and they laughs and sez, ‘Played out,’ and spects nothin’. Maybe ye think they spects suthin now, eh?” queried Johnson, suddenly, with a sharp look of suspicion.
Tommy looked up, shook his head, threw a stone at a passing rabbit, but did not reply.
“When I fust set eyes on you, Tommy,” continued Johnson, apparently reassured, “the fust day you kem and pumped for me, an entire stranger, and hevin no call to do it, I sez, ‘Johnson, Johnson,’ sez I,’ yer’s a boy you kin trust. Yer’s a boy that won’t play you; yer’s a chap that’s white and square,’—white and square, Tommy: them’s the very words I used.”
He paused for a moment, and then went on in a confidential whisper, “‘You want capital, Johnson,’ sez I, ‘to develop your resources, and you want a pardner. Capital you can send for, but your pardner, Johnson,—your pardner is right yer. And his name, it is Tommy Islington.’ Them’s the very words I used.”
He stopped and chafed his clammy hands upon his knees. “It’s six months ago sens I made you my pardner. Thar ain’t a lick I’ve struck sens then, Tommy, thar ain’t a han’ful o’ yearth I’ve washed, thar ain’t a shovelful o’ rock I’ve turned over, but I tho’t o’ you. ‘Share, and share alike,’ sez I. When I wrote to my agint, I wrote ekal for my pardner, Tommy Islington, he hevin no call to know ef the same was man or boy.”
He had moved nearer the boy, and would perhaps have laid his hand caressingly upon him, but even in his manifest affection there was a singular element of awed restraint and even fear,—a suggestion of something withheld even his fullest confidences, a hopeless perception of some vague barrier that never could be surmounted. He may have been at times dimly conscious that, in the eyes which Tommy raised to his, there was thorough intellectual appreciation, critical good-humor, even feminine softness, but nothing more. His nervousness somewhat heightened by his embarrassment, he went on with an attempt at calmness which his twitching white lips and unsteady fingers made pathetically grotesque. “Thar’s a bill o’ sale in my bunk, made out accordin’ to law, of an ekal ondivided half of the claim, and the consideration is two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,—gambling debts,—gambling debts from me to you, Tommy,—you understand?”—nothing could exceed the intense cunning of his eye at this moment,—“and then thar’s a will.”
“A will?” said Tommy, in amused surprise.
Johnson looked frightened.
“Eh?” he said, hurriedly, “wot will? Who said anythin’ ‘bout a will, Tommy?”
“Nobody,” replied Tommy, with unblushing calm.
Johnson passed his hand over his cold forehead, wrung the damp ends of his hair with his fingers, and went on: “Times when I’m took bad ez I was to-day, the boys about yer sez—you sez, maybe, Tommy—it’s whiskey. It ain’t, Tommy. It’s pizen,—quicksilver pizen. That’s what’s the matter with me. I’m salviated! Salviated with merkery.
“I’ve heerd o’ it before,” continued Johnson, appealing to the boy, “and ez a boy o’ permiskus reading, I reckon you hev too. Them men as works in cinnabar sooner or later gets salviated. It’s bound to fetch ‘em some time. Salviated by merkery.”
“What are you goin’ to do for it?” asked Tommy.
“When the agint comes up, and I begins to realize on this yer mine,” said Johnson, contemplatively, “I goes to New York. I sez to the barkeep’ o’ the hotel, ‘Show me the biggest doctor here.’ He shows me. I sez to him, ‘Salviated by merkery,—a year’s standin’,—how much?’ He sez, ‘Five thousand dollars, and take two o’ these pills at bedtime, and an ekil number o’ powders at meals, and come back in a week.’ And I goes back in a week, cured, and signs a certifikit to that effect.”
Encouraged by a look of interest in Tommy’s eye, he went on.
“So I gets cured. I goes to the barkeep’, and I sez, ‘Show me the biggest, fashionblest house thet’s for sale yer.’ And he sez, ‘The biggest, nat’rally b’longs to John Jacob Astor.’ And I sez, ‘Show him,’ and he shows him. And I sez, ‘Wot might you ask for this yer house?’ And he looks at me scornful, and sez, ‘Go ‘way, old man; you must be sick.’ And I fetches him one over the left eye, and he apologizes, and I gives him his own price for the house. I stocks that house with mohogany furniture and pervisions, and thar we lives, you and me, Tommy, you and me!”
The sun no longer shone upon the hillside. The shadows of the pines were beginning to creep over Johnson’s claim, and the air within the cavern was growing chill. In the gathering darkness his eyes shone brightly as he went on: “Then thar comes a day when we gives a big spread. We invites govners, members o’ Congress, gentlemen o’ fashion, and the like. And among ‘em I invites a Man as holds his head very high, a Man I once knew; but he doesn’t know I knows him, and he doesn’t remember me. And he comes and he sits opposite me, and I watches him. And he’s very airy, this Man, and very chipper, and he wipes his mouth with a white hankercher, and he smiles, and he ketches my eye. And he sez, ‘A glass o’ wine with you, Mr. Johnson’; and he fills his glass and I fills mine, and we rises. And I heaves that wine, glass and all, right into his damned grinnin’