The Garden of Eden. Max BrandЧитать онлайн книгу.
like to try it, eh?" said Ben Connor.
"Haven't you had years of happiness out of it?"
He looked at her with a grimace.
"Happiness?" he echoed. "Happiness?"
She stepped back so that she put his deeply-marked face in a better light.
"You're a queer one for a winner."
"Sure, the turf is crowded with queer ones like me."
"Winners, all of 'em?"
His eye had been gradually brightening while he talked to her. He felt that the girl rang true, as men ring true, yet there was nothing masculine about her.
"You've heard racing called the sport of kings? That's because only kings can afford to follow the ponies. Kings and Wall Street. But a fellow can't squeeze in without capital. I've made a go of it for a while; pretty soon we all go smash. Sooner or later I'll do what everybody else does – put up my cash on a sure thing and see my money go up in smoke."
"Then why don't you pull out with what you have?"
"Why does the earth keep running around the sun? Because there's a pull. Once you've followed the ponies you'll keep on following 'em. No hope for it. Oh, I've seen the boys come up one after another, make their killings, hit a streak of bad luck, plunge, and then watch their sure-thing throw up its tail in the stretch and fade into the ruck."
He was growing excited as he talked; he was beginning to realize that he must make his break from the turf now or never. And he spoke more to himself than to the girl.
"We all hang on. We play the game till it breaks us and still we stay with it. Here I am, two thousand miles away from the tracks – and sending for dope to make a play! Can you beat that? Well, so-long."
He turned away gloomily.
"Good night, Mr. Connor."
He turned sharply.
"Where'd you get that name?" he asked with a trace of suspicion.
"Off the telegram."
He nodded, but said: "I've an idea I've been chattering to much."
"My name is Ruth Manning," answered the girl. "I don't think you've said too much."
He kept his eyes steadily on her while he shook hands.
"I'm glad I know some one in Lukin," said Connor. "Good night, again."
CHAPTER FOUR
When Connor wakened the next morning, after his first impression of blinding light, he closed his eyes and waited for the sense of unhappy doom which usually comes to men of tense nerves and active life after sleep; but, with slow and pleasant wonder, he realized that the old numbness of brain and fever of pulse was gone. Then he looked up and lazily watched the shadow of the vine at his window move across the ceiling, a dim-bordered shadow continually changing as the wind gathered the leaves in solid masses and shook them out again. He pored upon this for a time, and next he watched a spider spinning a web in the corner; she worked in a draft which repeatedly lifted her from her place before she had fastened her thread, and dropped her a foot or more into space. Connor sat up to admire the artisan's skill and courage. Compared to men and insects, the spider really worked over an abyss two hundred feet deep, suspended by a silken thread. Connor slipped out of bed and stood beneath the growing web while the main cross threads were being fastened. He had been there for some time when, turning away to rub the ache out of the back of his neck, he again met the contrast between the man of this morning and the man of other days.
This time it was his image in the mirror, meeting him as he turned. That deep wrinkle in the middle of the forehead was half erased. The lips were neither compressed nor loose and shaking, and the eye was calm – it rested him to meet that glance in the mirror.
A mood of idle content always brings one to the window: Connor looked out on the street. A horseman hopped past like a day shadow, the hoofbeats muffled by thick sand, and the wind, moving at an exactly equal pace, carried a mist of dust just behind the horse's tail. Otherwise there was neither life nor color in the street of weather-beaten, low buildings, and the eye of Connor went beyond the roofs and began to climb the mountains. Here was a bald bright cliff, there a drift of trees, and again a surface of raw clay from which the upper soil had recently slipped; but these were not stopping points – they were rather the steps which led the glance to a sky of pale and transparent blue, and Connor felt a great desire to have that sky over him in place of a ceiling.
He splashed through a hasty bath, dressed, and ran down the stairs, humming. Jack Townsend stood on a box in the corner of the room, probing at a spider web in the corner.
"Too late for breakfast?" asked Connor.
The fat shoulders of the proprietor quivered, but he did not turn.
"Too late," he snapped. "Breakfast over at nine. No favorites up here."
Connor waited for the wave of irritation to rise in him, but to his own surprise he found himself saying:
"All right; you can't throw a good horse off his feed by cutting out one meal."
Jack Townsend faced his guest, rubbing his many-folded chin.
"Don't take long for this mountain air to brace up a gent, does it?" he asked rather pointedly.
"I'll tell you what," said Connor. "It isn't the air so much; it's the people that do a fellow good."
"Well," admitted the proprietor modestly, "they may be something in that. Kind of heartier out here, ain't they? More than in the city, I guess. I'll tell you what," he added. "I'll go out and speak to the missus about a snack for you. It's late, but we like to be obligin'."
He climbed carefully down from the box and started away.
"That girl again," thought Connor, and snapped his fingers. His spirits continued to rise, if that were possible, during the breakfast of ham and eggs, and coffee of a taste so metallic that only a copious use of cream made it drinkable. Jack Townsend, recovering to the full his customary good nature, joined his guest in a huge piece of toast with a layer of ham on it – simply to keep a stranger from eating alone, he said – and while he ate he talked about the race. Connor had noticed that the lobby was almost empty.
"They're over lookin' at the hosses," said Townsend, "and gettin' their bets down."
Connor laid down knife and fork, and resumed them hastily, but thereafter his interest in his food was entirely perfunctory. From the corner of his eye a gleam kept steadily upon the face of Townsend, who continued:
"Speaking personal, Mr. Connor, I'd like to have you look over them hosses yourself."
Connor, on the verge of speech, checked himself with a quick effort.
"Because," continued Townsend, "if I had your advice I might get down a little stake on one of 'em. You see?"
Ben Connor paused with a morsel of ham halfway toward his lips.
"Who told you I know anything about horses?" he asked.
"You told me yourself," grinned the proprietor, "and I'd like to figure how you knew the mare come from the Ballor Valley."
"From which?"
"From the Ballor Valley. You even named the irrigation and sand and all that. But you'd seen her brand before, I s'pose?"
"Hoofs like hers never came out of these mountains," smiled Ben Connor. "See the way she throws them and how flat they are."
"Well, that's true," nodded Jack Townsend. "It seems simple, now you say what it was, but it had me beat up to now. That is the way with most things. Take a fine hand with a rope. He daubs it on a cow so dead easy any fool thinks he can do the same. No, Mr. Connor, I'd still like to have you come out and take a look at them hosses. Besides" – he lowered his voice – "you might pick up a bit of loose change yourself. They's a plenty rolling round to-day."
Connor laughed, but there was excitement behind his mirth.
"The fact is, Townsend," he said, "I'm not interested in racing now. I'm up here for the air."
"Sure