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Crazy Weather. Charles L. McNichols
Читать онлайн.Название Crazy Weather
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781940436067
Автор произведения Charles L. McNichols
Жанр Зарубежная классика
Издательство Ingram
The Mormonhater had many years ago seen a stuffed gorilla in a dime museum in San Francisco, so badly moth-eaten that it was about to fall apart. The proprietor was very sad about its condition. He said he’d give a hundred dollars for a fresh one.
The Mormonhater returned to his boat, his dogs and his trap lines, and in due course he began to give ear to the Mojave stories and descriptions of Nebethee. Then all at once it came to him! Nebethee was nothing else than a great, nocturnal ape. He wrote to the keeper of the dime museum and asked him how much he’d give for such a creature—hide and carcass.
He got a letter back—he even let South Boy read it. There in black and white was the offer of one million dollars for any gorilla shot in the Colorado River valley, plus an invitation for the Mormonhater to head a parade along the whole length of Market Street in an open carriage with the mayor of the city on one side of him, the carcass of the beast on the other.
The Mormonhater had fished his Bible out of his cartridge bag and made South Boy swear, with his right hand on the Book that he’d never tell anyone.
South Boy went home and carefully read everything that the Advanced Geography had to say about the great apes, and studied the very inadequate picture shown in it.
He hadn’t promised not to hunt the creature himself.
However, Nebethee-hunting had proven very poor around the ranch. Up here, down in that shadow, might be his golden opportunity.
A million dollars . . . that was all the money in the world. He’d give the Mormonhater half. He’d even let the Mormonhater share the carriage with him and the mayor and the late Nebethee.
Of course the geography said that gorillas were only found in Africa, and that they were herbivorous. But the geography said nothing at all about Mojaves or the Colorado River valley. It showed complete ignorance about this part of the world.
So South Boy stared eagerly into the cliff’s shadow and started off in a trot along its rim, looking for a place to descend. While the idea of crowds of strange people gave him shudders under most conditions, the thought of that crowd along Market Street in San Francisco made him feel good. Maybe it was because they would be cheering him. That’s what the Mormonhater said: “They’ll be yelling their heads off!”
Not far away he found a slide: a place where the smaller boys from the Fort came on Saturdays to slide down the steep, gravelly face of the mesa on boards—the equivalent of tobag-ganing in a snowless country. He could go down there without getting his pants full of prickly pear and cholla.
So he paused at the top of the slide and called to Havek: “Tell me, have I heard truly? Does Nebethee look like a big, thick, hairy man that’s hunchbacked and stooped over?”
“Truly! Truly!” said Havek, his breath whistling in his excitement.
A million dollars and a parade! thought South Boy as he disappeared into the black on a minor avalanche of gravel.
His hand was inside his shirt, gripping the butt of his shortgun. He had a feeling he’d be better satisfied if he had a weapon of heavier caliber—one that he’d tried out on something more than tin cans at very short range. Still, this would be close-range work. He’d let Nebethee come twice arm-length and he’d put six bullets into his belly. After all, an ape was just a big, tough, hairy man. All the experts agreed—and there was hardly a man in the Valley but was at least a theoretical expert on homicide—that a bullet in the belly was the sure way of stopping a real tough man. The Foreman said (and it was well known he was more than a theoretical expert), “A bullet in the belly button beats two through the head.”
The gravel stopped rolling under the seat of South Boy’s pants and his feet hit soft dirt and hit running. He ran only as far as the first mesquite and there he crouched, his back protected by the thorny tree. He found he could see surprisingly well. There was nothing but low soap-weeds for yards around him. No hiding place for anything bigger than a rabbit. His heart beat hard, his imagination sent false, fleeting images to his eyes, but as a veteran of many a night hunt he knew he saw nothing real.
His heart eased and sank in slow, leaden disappointment.
He might have been there two minutes when he heard Havek’s yell. The yell of a warrior who goes to look into the face of death. Havek was coming down the gravel slide, invisible, but audible.
Havek came running across the flat, a swiftly moving blackness in a world less black. Nothing else moved. South Boy, hope fading, got up and trotted after him, still crouching low, his hand on his belly-gun. Havek was out in the moonlight, and he stopped in a small white playa.
“South Boy!” he called anxiously. “South Boy!”
South Boy came walking out of the shadows, slowly. Somehow he’d been so sure of a million dollars and glory a minute ago. Now he had a sickening feeling.
That Mormonhater was crazy! Everyone said so. South Boy didn’t want to believe it. The Mormonhater was his friend. But if Nebethee were an ape, there would have to be more than one. Apes have to breed and die like other creatures. Why hadn’t he thought of that before working his hopes up so high?
He came up to where Havek stood, and walked by him in glum silence.
Havek was staring at him, his mouth open, the whites of his eyes showing. “Truly,” he muttered. “Truly. A hawk-dreamer. His hands empty. He went down into Death’s face. He walked slowly away. Truly—truly—truly—a Great Thing.”
South Boy heard him and felt low and cheap. Havek thought he had done a brave thing. Instead he’d just made a fool of himself, believing a crazy man’s story. He could not explain because he had promised the Mormonhater. And how could he explain a thing like that to an Indian, anyway?
So he walked in silence, which was exactly what a Mojave would have done after an act of great courage. Havek followed him, murmuring delightedly; and South Boy felt all the more like a cheat, and his heart was lower than a snake’s belly.
The trouble is, he was thinking, I act Indian one time and white another time and I get all mixed. He tried to think that idea out to make it more coherent, but he couldn’t.
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