章节正文
"Who in hell are you?" someone demanded out of the darkness.
Before replying, the newcomer lit a third match, searching for a
place to sit down. As he bent forward, his strong, harsh face
once more came clearly into view.
"He's Colorado Rogers," the Cattleman answered for him; "I know
him."
"Well," insisted the first voice, "what in hell does Colorado
Rogers mean by bustin' in on our song fiesta that way?"
"Tell them, Rogers," advised the Cattleman, "tell them--just as
you told it down on the Gila ten years ago next month."
"What?" inquired Rogers. "Who are you?"
"You don't know me," replied the Cattleman, "but I was with Buck
Johnson's outfit then. Give us the yarn."
"Well," agreed Rogers, "pass over the 'makings' and I will."
He rolled and lit a cigarette, while I revelled in the memory of
his rich, great voice. It was of the sort made to declaim
against the sea or the rush of rivers or, as here, the fall of
waters and the thunder--full, from the chest, with the caressing
throat vibration that gives colour to the most ordinary
statements. After ten words we sank back oblivious of the storm,
forgetful of the leaky roof and the dirty floor, lost in the
story told us by the Old Timer.
CHAPTER TEN
THE TEXAS RANGERS
I came from Texas, like the bulk of you punchers, but a good
while before the most of you were born. That was forty-odd years
ago--and I've been on the Colorado River ever since. That's why
they call me Colorado Rogers. About a dozen of us came out
together. We had all been Texas Rangers, but when the war broke
out we were out of a job. We none of us cared much for the
Johnny Rebs, and still less for the Yanks, so we struck overland
for the West, with the idea of hitting the California diggings.
Well, we got switched off one way and another. When we got down
to about where Douglas is now, we found that the Mexican
Government was offering a bounty for Apache scalps. That looked
pretty good to us, for Injin chasing was our job, so we started
in to collect. Did pretty well, too, for about three months, and
then the Injins began to get too scarce, or too plenty in
streaks. Looked like our job was over with, but some of the boys
discovered that Mexicans, having straight black hair, you
couldn't tell one of their scalps from an Apache's. After that
the bounty business picked up for a while. It was too much for
me, though, and I quit the outfit and pushed on alone until I
struck the Colorado about where Yuma is now.
At that time the California immigrants by the southern route used
to cross just there, and these Yuma Injins had a monopoly on the
ferry business. They were a peaceful, fine-looking lot, without
a thing on but a gee-string. The women had belts with rawhide
strings hanging to the knees. They put them on one over the
other until they didn't feel too decollotey. It wasn't until the
soldiers came that the officers' wives got them to wear
handkerchiefs over their breasts. The system was all right,
though. They wallowed around in the hot, clean sand, like
chickens, and kept healthy. Since they took to wearing clothes
they've been petering out, and dying of dirt and assorted
diseases.
They ran this ferry monopoly by means of boats made of tules,
charged a scand'lous low price, and everything was happy and
lovely. I ran on a little bar and panned out some dust, so I
camped a while, washing gold, getting friendly with the Yumas,
and talking horse and other things with the immigrants.
About a month of this, and the Texas boys drifted in. Seems they
sort of overdid the scalp matter, and got found out. When they
saw me, they stopped and went into camp. They'd travelled a heap
of desert, and were getting sick of it. For a while they tried
gold washing, but I had the only pocket--and that was about
skinned. One evening a fellow named Walleye announced that he
had been doing some figuring, and wanted to make a speech. We
told him to fire ahead.
"Now look here," said he, "what's the use of going to California?
Why not stay here?"
"What in hell would we do here?" someone asked. "Collect Gila
monsters for their good looks?"
"Don't get gay," said Walleye. "What's the matter with going
into business? Here's a heap of people going through, and more
coming every day. This ferry business could be made to pay big.
Them Injins charges two bits a head. That's a crime for the only
way across. And how much do you suppose whisky'd be worth to
drink after that desert? And a man's so sick of himself by the
time he gets this far that he'd play chuck-a-luck, let alone faro
or monte."
That kind of talk hit them where they lived, and Yuma was founded
right then and there. They hadn't any whisky yet, but cards were
plenty, and the ferry monopoly was too easy. Walleye served
notice on the Injins that a dollar a head went; and we all set to
building a tule raft like the others. Then the wild bunch got
uneasy, so they walked upstream one morning and stole the Injins'
boats. The Injins came after them innocent as babies, thinking
the raft had gone adrift. When they got into camp our men opened
up and killed four of them as a kind of hint. After that the
ferry company didn't have any trouble. The Yumas moved up river
a ways, where they've lived ever since. They got the corpses and
buried them. That is, they dug a trench for each one and laid
poles across it, with a funeral pyre on the poles. Then they put
the body on top, and the women of the family cut their hair off
and threw it on. After that they set fire to the outfit, and,
when the poles bad burned through, the whole business fell into
the trench of its own accord. It was the neatest, automatic,
self-cocking, double-action sort of a funeral I ever saw. There
wasn't any ceremony--only crying.
The ferry business flourished at prices which were sometimes hard
to collect. But it was a case of pay or go back, and it was a
tur'ble long ways back. We got us timbers and made a scow; built
a baile and saloon and houses out of adobe; and called her
Yuma, after the Injins that had really started her. We got our
supplies through the Gulf of California, where sailing boats
worked up the river. People began to come in for one reason or
another, and first thing we knew we had a store and all sorts of
trimmings. In fact we was a real live town.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE SAILOR WITH ONE HAND
At this moment the heavy beat of the storm on the roof ceased
with miraculous suddenness, leaving the outside world empty of
sound save for the DRIP, DRIP, DRIP of eaves. Nobody ventured
to fill in the pause that followed the stranger's last words, so
in a moment he continued his narrative.
We had every sort of people with us off and on, and, as I was
lookout at a popular game, I saw them all. One evening I was on
my way home about two o'clock of a moonlit night, when on the
edge of the shadow I stumbled over a body lying part across the
footway. At the same instant I heard the rip of steel through
cloth and felt a sharp stab in my left leg. For a minute I
thought some drunk had used his knife on me, and I mighty near
derringered him as he lay. But somehow I didn't, and looking
closer, I saw the man was unconscious. Then I scouted to see
what had cut me, and found that the fellow had lost a hand. In
place of it he wore a sharp steel hook. This I had tangled up
with and gotten well pricked.
I dragged him out into the light. He was a slim-built young
fellow, with straight black hair, long and lank and oily, a lean
face, and big hooked nose. He had on only a thin shirt, a pair
of rough wool pants, and the rawhide home-made zapatos the
Mexicans wore then instead of boots. Across his forehead ran a
long gash, cutting his left eyebrow square in two.
There was no doubt of his being alive, for he was breathing hard,
like a man does when he gets hit over the head. It didn't sound
good. When a man breathes that way he's mostly all gone.
Well, it was really none of my business, as you might say. Men
got batted over the head often enough in those days. But for
some reason I picked him up and carried him to my 'dobe shack,
and laid him out, and washed his cut with sour wine. That
brought him to. Sour wine is fine to put a wound in shape to
heal, but it's no soothing syrup. He sat up as though he'd been
touched with a hot poker, stared around wild-eyed, and cut loose
with that song you were singing. Only it wasn't that verse.
It was another one further along, that went like this:
Their coffin was their ship, and their grave it was the sea,
Blow high, blow low, what care we;
And the quarter that we gave them was to sink them in the sea,
Down on the coast of the High Barbaree.
It fair made my hair rise to hear him, with the big, still,
solemn desert outside, and the quiet moonlight, and the shadows,
and him sitting up straight and gaunt, his eyes blazing each side
his big eagle nose, and his snaky hair hanging over the raw cut
across his head. However, I made out to get him bandaged up and
in shape; and pretty soon he sort of went to sleep.
Well, he was clean out of his head for nigh two weeks. Most of
the time he lay flat on his back staring at the pole roof, his
eyes burning and looking like they saw each one something a
different distance off, the way crazy eyes do. That was when he
was best. Then again he'd sing that Barbaree song until I'd go
out and look at the old Colorado flowing by just to be sure I
hadn't died and gone below. Or else he'd just talk. That was
the worst performance of all. It was like listening to one end
of a telephone, though we didn't know what telephones were in
those days. He began when be was a kid, and he gave his side of
conversations, pausing for replies. I could mighty near furnish
the replies sometimes. It was queer lingo--about ships and
ships' officers and gales and calms and fights and pearls and
whales and islands and birds and skies. But it was all little
stuff. I used to listen by the hour, but I never made out
anything really important as to who the man was, or where he'd
come from, or what he'd done.
At the end of the second week I came in at noon as per usual to
fix him up with grub. I didn't pay any attention to him, for he
was quiet. As I was bending over the fire he spoke. Usually I
didn't bother with his talk, for it didn't mean anything, but
something in his voice made me turn. He was lying on his side,
those black eyes of his blazing at me, but now both of them saw
the same distance.
"Where are my clothes?" he asked, very intense.
"You ain't in any shape to want clothes," said I. "Lie still."
I hadn't any more than got the words out of my mouth before he
was atop me. His method was a winner. He had me by the throat
with his hand, and I felt the point of the hook pricking the back
of my neck. One little squeeze--Talk about your deadly weapons!
But he'd been too sick and too long abed. He turned dizzy and
keeled over, and I dumped him back on the bunk. Then I put my
six-shooter on.
In a minute or so he came to.
"Now you're a nice, sweet proposition," said I, as soon as I was
sure he could understand me. "Here I pick you up on the street
and save your worthlesscarcass, and the first chance you get you
try to crawl my hump.
Explain."
"Where's my clothes?" he demanded again, very fierce.
"For heaven's sake," I yelled at him, "what's the matter with you
and your old clothes? There ain't enough of them to dust a
fiddle with anyway. What do you think I'd want with them?
They're safe enough."'
"Let me have them," he begged.
Before replying, the newcomer lit a third match, searching for a
place to sit down. As he bent forward, his strong, harsh face
once more came clearly into view.
"He's Colorado Rogers," the Cattleman answered for him; "I know
him."
"Well," insisted the first voice, "what in hell does Colorado
Rogers mean by bustin' in on our song fiesta that way?"
"Tell them, Rogers," advised the Cattleman, "tell them--just as
you told it down on the Gila ten years ago next month."
"What?" inquired Rogers. "Who are you?"
"You don't know me," replied the Cattleman, "but I was with Buck
Johnson's outfit then. Give us the yarn."
"Well," agreed Rogers, "pass over the 'makings' and I will."
He rolled and lit a cigarette, while I revelled in the memory of
his rich, great voice. It was of the sort made to declaim
against the sea or the rush of rivers or, as here, the fall of
waters and the thunder--full, from the chest, with the caressing
throat vibration that gives colour to the most ordinary
statements. After ten words we sank back oblivious of the storm,
forgetful of the leaky roof and the dirty floor, lost in the
story told us by the Old Timer.
CHAPTER TEN
THE TEXAS RANGERS
I came from Texas, like the bulk of you punchers, but a good
while before the most of you were born. That was forty-odd years
ago--and I've been on the Colorado River ever since. That's why
they call me Colorado Rogers. About a dozen of us came out
together. We had all been Texas Rangers, but when the war broke
out we were out of a job. We none of us cared much for the
Johnny Rebs, and still less for the Yanks, so we struck overland
for the West, with the idea of hitting the California diggings.
Well, we got switched off one way and another. When we got down
to about where Douglas is now, we found that the Mexican
Government was offering a bounty for Apache scalps. That looked
pretty good to us, for Injin chasing was our job, so we started
in to collect. Did pretty well, too, for about three months, and
then the Injins began to get too scarce, or too plenty in
streaks. Looked like our job was over with, but some of the boys
discovered that Mexicans, having straight black hair, you
couldn't tell one of their scalps from an Apache's. After that
the bounty business picked up for a while. It was too much for
me, though, and I quit the outfit and pushed on alone until I
struck the Colorado about where Yuma is now.
At that time the California immigrants by the southern route used
to cross just there, and these Yuma Injins had a monopoly on the
ferry business. They were a peaceful, fine-looking lot, without
a thing on but a gee-string. The women had belts with rawhide
strings hanging to the knees. They put them on one over the
other until they didn't feel too decollotey. It wasn't until the
soldiers came that the officers' wives got them to wear
handkerchiefs over their breasts. The system was all right,
though. They wallowed around in the hot, clean sand, like
chickens, and kept healthy. Since they took to wearing clothes
they've been petering out, and dying of dirt and assorted
diseases.
They ran this ferry monopoly by means of boats made of tules,
charged a scand'lous low price, and everything was happy and
lovely. I ran on a little bar and panned out some dust, so I
camped a while, washing gold, getting friendly with the Yumas,
and talking horse and other things with the immigrants.
About a month of this, and the Texas boys drifted in. Seems they
sort of overdid the scalp matter, and got found out. When they
saw me, they stopped and went into camp. They'd travelled a heap
of desert, and were getting sick of it. For a while they tried
gold washing, but I had the only pocket--and that was about
skinned. One evening a fellow named Walleye announced that he
had been doing some figuring, and wanted to make a speech. We
told him to fire ahead.
"Now look here," said he, "what's the use of going to California?
Why not stay here?"
"What in hell would we do here?" someone asked. "Collect Gila
monsters for their good looks?"
"Don't get gay," said Walleye. "What's the matter with going
into business? Here's a heap of people going through, and more
coming every day. This ferry business could be made to pay big.
Them Injins charges two bits a head. That's a crime for the only
way across. And how much do you suppose whisky'd be worth to
drink after that desert? And a man's so sick of himself by the
time he gets this far that he'd play chuck-a-luck, let alone faro
or monte."
That kind of talk hit them where they lived, and Yuma was founded
right then and there. They hadn't any whisky yet, but cards were
plenty, and the ferry monopoly was too easy. Walleye served
notice on the Injins that a dollar a head went; and we all set to
building a tule raft like the others. Then the wild bunch got
uneasy, so they walked upstream one morning and stole the Injins'
boats. The Injins came after them innocent as babies, thinking
the raft had gone adrift. When they got into camp our men opened
up and killed four of them as a kind of hint. After that the
ferry company didn't have any trouble. The Yumas moved up river
a ways, where they've lived ever since. They got the corpses and
buried them. That is, they dug a trench for each one and laid
poles across it, with a funeral pyre on the poles. Then they put
the body on top, and the women of the family cut their hair off
and threw it on. After that they set fire to the outfit, and,
when the poles bad burned through, the whole business fell into
the trench of its own accord. It was the neatest, automatic,
self-cocking, double-action sort of a funeral I ever saw. There
wasn't any ceremony--only crying.
The ferry business flourished at prices which were sometimes hard
to collect. But it was a case of pay or go back, and it was a
tur'ble long ways back. We got us timbers and made a scow; built
a baile and saloon and houses out of adobe; and called her
Yuma, after the Injins that had really started her. We got our
supplies through the Gulf of California, where sailing boats
worked up the river. People began to come in for one reason or
another, and first thing we knew we had a store and all sorts of
trimmings. In fact we was a real live town.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE SAILOR WITH ONE HAND
At this moment the heavy beat of the storm on the roof ceased
with miraculous suddenness, leaving the outside world empty of
sound save for the DRIP, DRIP, DRIP of eaves. Nobody ventured
to fill in the pause that followed the stranger's last words, so
in a moment he continued his narrative.
We had every sort of people with us off and on, and, as I was
lookout at a popular game, I saw them all. One evening I was on
my way home about two o'clock of a moonlit night, when on the
edge of the shadow I stumbled over a body lying part across the
footway. At the same instant I heard the rip of steel through
cloth and felt a sharp stab in my left leg. For a minute I
thought some drunk had used his knife on me, and I mighty near
derringered him as he lay. But somehow I didn't, and looking
closer, I saw the man was unconscious. Then I scouted to see
what had cut me, and found that the fellow had lost a hand. In
place of it he wore a sharp steel hook. This I had tangled up
with and gotten well pricked.
I dragged him out into the light. He was a slim-built young
fellow, with straight black hair, long and lank and oily, a lean
face, and big hooked nose. He had on only a thin shirt, a pair
of rough wool pants, and the rawhide home-made zapatos the
Mexicans wore then instead of boots. Across his forehead ran a
long gash, cutting his left eyebrow square in two.
There was no doubt of his being alive, for he was breathing hard,
like a man does when he gets hit over the head. It didn't sound
good. When a man breathes that way he's mostly all gone.
Well, it was really none of my business, as you might say. Men
got batted over the head often enough in those days. But for
some reason I picked him up and carried him to my 'dobe shack,
and laid him out, and washed his cut with sour wine. That
brought him to. Sour wine is fine to put a wound in shape to
heal, but it's no soothing syrup. He sat up as though he'd been
touched with a hot poker, stared around wild-eyed, and cut loose
with that song you were singing. Only it wasn't that verse.
It was another one further along, that went like this:
Their coffin was their ship, and their grave it was the sea,
Blow high, blow low, what care we;
And the quarter that we gave them was to sink them in the sea,
Down on the coast of the High Barbaree.
It fair made my hair rise to hear him, with the big, still,
solemn desert outside, and the quiet moonlight, and the shadows,
and him sitting up straight and gaunt, his eyes blazing each side
his big eagle nose, and his snaky hair hanging over the raw cut
across his head. However, I made out to get him bandaged up and
in shape; and pretty soon he sort of went to sleep.
Well, he was clean out of his head for nigh two weeks. Most of
the time he lay flat on his back staring at the pole roof, his
eyes burning and looking like they saw each one something a
different distance off, the way crazy eyes do. That was when he
was best. Then again he'd sing that Barbaree song until I'd go
out and look at the old Colorado flowing by just to be sure I
hadn't died and gone below. Or else he'd just talk. That was
the worst performance of all. It was like listening to one end
of a telephone, though we didn't know what telephones were in
those days. He began when be was a kid, and he gave his side of
conversations, pausing for replies. I could mighty near furnish
the replies sometimes. It was queer lingo--about ships and
ships' officers and gales and calms and fights and pearls and
whales and islands and birds and skies. But it was all little
stuff. I used to listen by the hour, but I never made out
anything really important as to who the man was, or where he'd
come from, or what he'd done.
At the end of the second week I came in at noon as per usual to
fix him up with grub. I didn't pay any attention to him, for he
was quiet. As I was bending over the fire he spoke. Usually I
didn't bother with his talk, for it didn't mean anything, but
something in his voice made me turn. He was lying on his side,
those black eyes of his blazing at me, but now both of them saw
the same distance.
"Where are my clothes?" he asked, very intense.
"You ain't in any shape to want clothes," said I. "Lie still."
I hadn't any more than got the words out of my mouth before he
was atop me. His method was a winner. He had me by the throat
with his hand, and I felt the point of the hook pricking the back
of my neck. One little squeeze--Talk about your deadly weapons!
But he'd been too sick and too long abed. He turned dizzy and
keeled over, and I dumped him back on the bunk. Then I put my
six-shooter on.
In a minute or so he came to.
"Now you're a nice, sweet proposition," said I, as soon as I was
sure he could understand me. "Here I pick you up on the street
and save your worthlesscarcass, and the first chance you get you
try to crawl my hump.
Explain."
"Where's my clothes?" he demanded again, very fierce.
"For heaven's sake," I yelled at him, "what's the matter with you
and your old clothes? There ain't enough of them to dust a
fiddle with anyway. What do you think I'd want with them?
They're safe enough."'
"Let me have them," he begged.
- california [,kæli´fɔ:njə]
n.加利福尼亚 (初中英语单词) - scarce [skeəs, skers] a.缺乏的；稀有的 (初中英语单词)
- peaceful [´pi:sfəl] a.和平的；平静的 (初中英语单词)
- system [´sistəm] n.系统，体系，制度 (初中英语单词)
- healthy [´helθi] a.健康的 (初中英语单词)
- innocent [´inəsənt] a.无罪的；单纯的 (初中英语单词)
- funeral [´fju:nərəl] n.葬礼，丧葬；困难 (初中英语单词)
- accord [ə´kɔ:d] n.&vi.符合 vt.给与 (初中英语单词)
- instant [´instənt] a.立即的 n.紧迫；瞬间 (初中英语单词)
- hooked [hukt] a.钩状的；上瘾的 (初中英语单词)
- forehead [´fɔrid] n.额，前部 (初中英语单词)
- mostly [´məustli] ad.主要地；多半；通常 (初中英语单词)
- moonlight [´mu:nlait] n.&a.月光(的) (初中英语单词)
- performance [pə´fɔ:məns] n.履行；行为；工作 (初中英语单词)
- bother [´bɔðə] v.打扰 n.麻烦(事) (初中英语单词)
- deadly [´dedli] a.致命的 ad.死一般地 (初中英语单词)
- newcomer [´nju:,kʌmə] n.新来的人；移民 (高中英语单词)
- colorado [,kɔlə´rɑ:dəu] n.科罗拉多(州) (高中英语单词)
- outfit [´aut,fit] n.装备 vt.供给；装备 (高中英语单词)
- offering [´ɔfəriŋ] n.提供；礼物；捐献 (高中英语单词)
- bounty [´baunti] n.慷慨；恩惠；赠物 (高中英语单词)
- monopoly [mə´nɔpəli] n.垄断(权)；专利事业 (高中英语单词)
- hanging [´hæŋiŋ] n.绞刑 a.悬挂着的 (高中英语单词)
- trench [trentʃ] n.&v.(挖)沟，(挖)战壕 (高中英语单词)
- saloon [sə´lu:n] n.大厅；餐车 (高中英语单词)
- mighty [´maiti] a.强有力的 ad.很 (高中英语单词)
- unconscious [ʌn´kɔnʃəs] a.无意识的；不觉察的 (高中英语单词)
- eyebrow [´aibrau] n.眉 (高中英语单词)
- coffin [´kɔfin] n.棺材，柩 (高中英语单词)
- worthless [´wə:θləs] a.无价值的 (高中英语单词)
- vibration [vai´breiʃən] n.颤动；振动；摇动 (英语四级单词)
- gotten [´gɔtn] get的过去分词 (英语四级单词)
- winner [´winə] n.胜利者，得奖者 (英语四级单词)
- carcass [´kɑ:kəs] n.(动物的)尸体 (英语四级单词)
- miraculous [mi´rækjuləs] a.非凡的；奇迹般的 (英语六级单词)
- moonlit [´mu:n,lit] a.月光普照的 (英语六级单词)
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