A First Family of Tasajara. Bret Harte
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me and Peters there”—indicating the biscuit-nibbler, who was beginning to show alarming signs of returning to the barrel again—“hev got to trapse five times that distance.”
“More’n half a mile, if it comes to that,” said Peters, gloomily. He paused in putting on his overcoat as if thinking better of it, while even the more fortunate and contiguous Wingate languidly lapsed against the counter again.
The moment was a critical one. Billings was evidently also regretfully eying the chair he had just quitted. Harkutt resolved on a heroic effort.
“Come, boys,” he said, with brisk conviviality, “take a parting drink with me before you go.” Producing a black bottle from some obscurity beneath the counter that smelt strongly of india-rubber boots, he placed it with four glasses before his guests. Each made a feint of holding his glass against the opaque window while filling it, although nothing could be seen. A sudden tumult of wind and rain again shook the building, but even after it had passed the glass door still rattled violently.
“Just see what’s loose, Peters,” said Billings; “you’re nearest it.”
Peters, still holding the undrained glass in his hand, walked slowly towards it.
“It’s suthin’—or somebody outside,” he said, hesitatingly.
The three others came eagerly to his side. Through the glass, clouded from within by their breath, and filmed from without by the rain, some vague object was moving, and what seemed to be a mop of tangled hair was apparently brushing against the pane. The door shook again, but less strongly. Billings pressed his face against the glass. “Hol’ on,” he said in a quick whisper,—“it’s ‘Lige!” But it was too late. Harkutt had already drawn the lower bolt, and a man stumbled from the outer obscurity into the darker room.
The inmates drew away as he leaned back for a moment against the door that closed behind him. Then dimly, but instinctively, discerning the glass of liquor which Wingate still mechanically held in his hand, he reached forward eagerly, took it from Wingate’s surprised and unresisting fingers, and drained it at a gulp. The four men laughed vaguely, but not as cheerfully as they might.
“I was just shutting up,” began Harkutt, dubiously.
“I won’t keep you a minit,” said the intruder, nervously fumbling in the breast pocket of his hickory shirt. “It’s a matter of business—Harkutt—I”—But he was obliged to stop here to wipe his face and forehead with the ends of a loose handkerchief tied round his throat. From the action, and what could be seen of his pale, exhausted face, it was evident that the moisture upon it was beads of perspiration, and not the rain which some abnormal heat of his body was converting into vapor from his sodden garments as he stood there.
“I’ve got a document here,” he began again, producing a roll of paper tremblingly from his pocket, “that I’d like you to glance over, and perhaps you’d”—His voice, which had been feverishly exalted, here broke and rattled with a cough.
Billings, Wingate, and Peters fell apart and looked out of the window. “It’s too dark to read anything now, ‘Lige,” said Harkutt, with evasive good humor, “and I ain’t lightin’ up to-night.”
“But I can tell you the substance of it,” said the man, with a faintness that however had all the distinctness of a whisper, “if you’ll just step inside a minute. It’s a matter of importance and a bargain”—
“I reckon we must be goin’,” said Billings to the others, with marked emphasis. “We’re keepin’ Harkutt from shuttin’ up.” “Good-night!” “Good-night!” added Peters and Wingate, ostentatiously following Billings hurriedly through the door. “So long!”
The door closed behind them, leaving Harkutt alone with his importunate intruder. Possibly his resentment at his customers’ selfish abandonment of him at this moment developed a vague spirit of opposition to them and mitigated his feeling towards ‘Lige. He groped his way to the counter, struck a match, and lit a candle. Its feeble rays faintly illuminated the pale, drawn face of the applicant, set in a tangle of wet, unkempt, party-colored hair. It was not the face of an ordinary drunkard; although tremulous and sensitive from some artificial excitement, there was no ENGORGEMENT or congestion in the features or complexion, albeit they were morbid and unhealthy. The expression was of a suffering that was as much mental as physical, and yet in some vague way appeared unmeaning—and unheroic.
“I want to see you about selling my place on the creek. I want you to take it off my hands for a bargain. I want to get quit of it, at once, for just enough to take me out o’ this. I don’t want any profit; only money enough to get away.” His utterance, which had a certain kind of cultivation, here grew thick and harsh again, and he looked eagerly at the bottle which stood on the counter.
“Look here, ‘Lige,” said Harkutt, not unkindly. “It’s too late to do anythin’ tonight. You come in to-morrow.” He would have added “when you’re sober,” but for a trader’s sense of politeness to a possible customer, and probably some doubt of the man’s actual condition.
“God knows where or what I may be tomorrow! It would kill me to go back and spend another night as the last, if I don’t kill myself on the way to do it.”
Harkutt’s face darkened grimly. It was indeed as Billings had said. The pitiable weakness of the man’s manner not only made his desperation inadequate and ineffective, but even lent it all the cheapness of acting. And, as if to accent his simulation of a part, his fingers, feebly groping in his shirt bosom, slipped aimlessly and helplessly from the shining handle of a pistol in his pocket to wander hesitatingly towards the bottle on the counter.
Harkutt took the bottle, poured out a glass of the liquor, and pushed it before his companion, who drank it eagerly. Whether it gave him more confidence, or his attention was no longer diverted, he went on more collectedly and cheerfully, and with no trace of his previous desperation in his manner. “Come, Harkutt, buy my place. It’s a bargain, I tell you. I’ll sell it cheap. I only want enough to get away with. Give me twenty-five dollars and it’s yours. See, there’s the papers—the quitclaim—all drawn up and signed.” He drew the roll of paper from his pocket again, apparently forgetful of the adjacent weapon.
“Look here, ‘Lige,” said Harkutt, with a business-like straightening of his lips, “I ain’t buyin’ any land in Tasajara,—least of all yours on the creek. I’ve got more invested here already than I’ll ever get back again. But I tell you what I’ll do. You say you can’t go back to your shanty. Well, seein’ how rough it is outside, and that the waters of the creek are probably all over the trail by this time, I reckon you’re about right. Now, there’s five dollars!” He laid down a coin sharply on the counter. “Take that and go over to Rawlett’s and get a bed and some supper. In the mornin’ you may be able to strike up a trade with somebody else—or change your mind. How did you get here? On your hoss?”
“Yes.”
“He ain’t starved yet?”
“No; he can eat grass. I can’t.”
Either the liquor or Harkutt’s practical unsentimental treatment of the situation seemed to give him confidence. He met Harkutt’s eye more steadily as the latter went on. “You kin turn your hoss for the night into my stock corral next to Rawlett’s. It’ll save you payin’ for fodder and stablin’.”
The man took up the coin with a certain slow gravity which was almost like dignity. “Thank you,” he said, laying the paper on the counter. “I’ll leave that as security.”
“Don’t want it, ‘Lige,” said Harkutt, pushing it back.
“I’d rather leave it.”
“But suppose you have a chance to sell it to somebody at Rawlett’s?” continued Harkutt, with a precaution that seemed ironical.
“I don’t think there’s much chance of that.”
He remained quiet, looking at Harkutt with an odd expression as he rubbed the edge of the coin that he held between his fingers abstractedly on the counter. Something in his gaze—rather