The Blue Jay , livre ebook

eBookIt.com - Max Brand

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

123 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

If Randal could make his ranch pay, he stood to inherit his grandfather's fortune. But a cattle-rustling band of ranch-hands were robbing him blind, and he had to do something to stop them. He sent for Kitchin, the toughest man he knew - the man he had once sent to Fulsom Penitentiary. Even though Kitchin would as soon break an hombre in two with his bare hands as shoot him, even with the offer of a fabulous reward, Kitchin wasn't sure he'd live long enough to collect. He didn't know he had an ace up his sleeve - Pepillo, the Mexican kid they called "Blue Jay."

Sujets

Westerns

Fiction

Informations

Publié par	eBookIt.com
Date de parution	20 janvier 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781456636234
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0050€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

The Blue Jay
by Max Brand
Subjects: Fiction -- Western / Love Story

First published in 1926
This edition published by Reading Essentials
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
For.ullstein@gmail.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

THE BLUE JAY
by Max Brand
CHAPTER I
Nobody has to tell me. Because I know.
If I had stayed on the range, I would of been all right,because mixing around in my own crowd of folks, theywould of understood that I was just extra happy and lettingoff steam. But you take a gang of city people, theygot no sense of humor. Neither do they care none aboutwhat other folks would be thinking. The only street thatthey’ve any interest in is the one that they live on, andthe only house of that street that amounts to a damn is thenumber where they stay.
I mean, the usual city folks. Not you! But you got toadmit that the ordinary pavement walker is ornery.
I don’t want to get mixed up. I want to tell this straight.
It begun with when I hit the pay dirt on the back ofold Champion Mountain. I thought it would be one ofthose damn pinch veins. It started too good. But it didn’t pinch. It strung out and got wider. I ground up a terriblelot of dust with my coffee mill and before that vein disappearedI had the haul of my life.
My haul was just too big. The idea of staying on therange or in a range town wouldn’t fit up with a load ofhard cash like that. I needed a lot fancier corral to showmy stuff, and so I started for the City.
I didn’t have no idea of spending everything that I had,of course. I figgered that my wad was so thick that I couldpaw at it for six months and never more than raise thesurface. After that, I would go back to the range, wheremy own country is, and grab me a ranch and a gang ofcows and start in reglar to be a real man. Prospectingwas never more than a side show, to me.
When I got to town, I got myself fixed up with someclothes. They wasn’t quiet, either. They was calculated tomatch up with the way that I was feeling inside, whichwas just gay, you understand? I didn’t miss no tricks.Gloves and such went in with the lot and I had a vestthat fair palpitated good cheer. I got me a cane, too—whichthey call them sticks when they speak polite. Ieven got down to spats, though I never got used to wearingcloth on my feet.
However, I want to say that where I appeared I was anoise that made folks look round, and I begun to have areal gay time. I set myself up at a hotel where you couldspend five bucks for a meal without no particular painand where the elevator boy looked like the son of a collegepresident. After a while I collected some friends, too,and they showed me how really to part yourself from coin.
So I woke up one morning and pulled out my wad andI was pretty near beat to see that it had melted down tothree hundred-dollar bills.
That wasn’t enough to make a dent on the range. So Idecided that it might as well go chasing after the rest ofthe gold dust. I rung up a couple of the boys and westarted on a party.
I made my second big mistake before I started out.I was feeling a mite reckless but I figgered out that Iwouldn’t really want to hurt nobody’s feelings, and so Ileft my Colt behind in the bureau drawer. That was surea fool idea, as you’ll see in a minute.
Anyway, we skidded around the town for a while andabout midnight we found ourselves in a gambling joint. Iseen my last twenty go across the green felt just at thesame time that the dealer done a funny pass. I reachedout and grabbed his hand, and down from his sleeve therecome—oh, nothing much—just a couple of aces. Youunderstand?
I was not really peeved. I had aimed to spend thelast of my coin that night, and it didn’t much matter how itwent, but I seen that this discovery of mine give me achance to make that party real . I just peeled off my coatand stood up on the table and told the folks in generalwhat I thought of them and their ways. The boss of thejoint, he sicked a couple of bounders on me, and so Idived off the table at them to make a beginning.
But they didn’t make a beginning. They just flattenedout on the floor and I had to walk on their stomachs toget at the crowd. That’s where the damage begun.
You see, if I had had the old Colt with me, therewouldn’t of been any trouble. There rarely is with guns.Revolvers is not deadly weapons. They’re just noisemakers. Some folks fires off crackers on the Fourth; on therange, they’re more partial to Colts. You get heated upand you pull your Colt and you blaze away. You don’t hitnothing, because revolvers ain’t meant for hitting targetsexcept by accident. You just bust a couple of mirrors andwindows and plough up the floor, and rake the ceiling,and everybody whoops and dances around and limbers up,and a good time is had by all and nothing in the way ofdamage done that a carpenter can’t fix in half a day’swork.
But I didn’t have any Colt on me, as you’ve noticedin what I said before. All I had was my hands. And thatwas where I made my mistake.
I’m not small; and working a single jack and grindingpay dirt hadn’t made me no smaller. When I stepped intothat crowd and laid my hands on a couple of the boys, Icould feel them give under my grip like their bones wasmade of India rubber. More than that, they got scared,and they begun to yell: “He’s gone mad. Get the police!”It was disgusting to hear the way that they carried on becauseI was taking a mite of exercise. One of them got soexcited that he hit me over the head with a chair, andafter that I let that crowd have both fists. I waded throughthem across the room. Then I turned around and made afurrow back the long way of the place, and when I cometo the door, there was a couple of cops.
What difference was cops to me? I bumped their headstogether, took a breath of fresh air from the outside, andwent back to finish scrambling up the eggs inside. But I’dhardly got started when one of the coppers crawled ontohis feet and pulled a gun and I had to take it away fromhim. Then his buddy got funny with his night stick andbusted it over my head, and I had to take him up andthrow him through the window, with the glass and theframe carried along in front of him.
Then the lights went out, and right after that I skiddedon something and went down on the back of my head.When I come to, I was riding on a wagon with a coupleof boys in blue coats and brass buttons sitting on mychest and stomach. I says to them, would they please mindshifting off my stomach, and one of them says: “He’swaking up. I told you that he would!”
“Sure,” says another, “you can’t kill a Swede by hittinghim over the head. He ain’t vulnerable there.”
I says: “Gentlemen, did you sort of refer to me byspeakin’ of a Swede?”
They allowed that they did, and I got real irritated. Thesize of that patrol wagon, it cramped my style a gooddeal, but I managed to have a pretty good time, takingall things together, and the five coppers was pretty groggywhen we got to the station-house. Then about a dozenfresh hands turned out and they grabbed me.
“Use gun-butts on him,” says the sergeant, where hewas lying on the floor holding his stomach with botharms. “Clubs ain’t nothing but matchwood to him!”
That was a mighty practical police force. They took hisword for it and they tried out my head with gun-butts. Icome to in a cell with my head feeling like two, and allwrapped up in bandages. My clothes was tore up, too,which hurt me more than the feeling of my head—awhole lot! Because that outfit was something that the boysup there on the range would pretty near have paid admissionfor the sake of having a look at it!
However, the next morning I had to see the judge. Helooked me over and wanted to know if I had resisted arrest,and the sergeant said that here was fifteen membersof the force that would testify that I had and there wasfive more that he wanted particular to bring into the court-room,but the doctor said that they was not fit to be allowedout of bed right then.
“And how about the prisoner?” said the judge. “Helooks as though he had been sent down a flume!”
I said that I was all right and that I was sorry that Ihad messed up any of the boys.
“Are you a professional wrestler?” says the judge.
“With doggies and drills,” says I.
The judge give me a grin. “You are just down from therange?” says he.
“My first and last appearance here, you bet,” says I.
“All right,” says the judge. “By the looks of my policeforce, it had better be your last appearance. Thirty days!”
“Thirty days?” sings out the police force, when theygot me outside the room. “Thirty years would be morelike it! I never hear an old sap like that judge. He hadought to be in an asylum for crippled brains!”
Thirty days didn’t seem like very much, between youand me, but that was right where I made a terrible mistake.I thought that a month in jail would be nothing, butby the time that the first week was over, and the swellingsand the bumps on my head had sunk down pretty nearto the bedrock of my skull, my patience was all used up.Besides, the fare was pretty poor in that jail. It’s hard tokeep two hundred and twenty pounds of bone and meatworking on the sort of a diet that they handed me. So thenight of the eighth day, I tried the bars. I found a placewhere the stuff give a little when I pulled, and pretty soonI had worked a bar out of its socket.
My hands was bleeding before I got through workingthat bar loose, but after that, I had a sort of a can-openerto use on the rest of the prison. I never seen alever that was handier for the forcing of doors than thatbar was. It just worked fine, and I simply tore myself outof that jail, as easy as anything you would want.
I got to the street, when I r