"062 (B062) - The Pirate's Ghost (1938-04) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

It was about three o'clock in the morning when the rat trap went off. When he heard the rat trap snap, he reared up in bed, clawed for his six-gun and pointed it at the box. He had set the rat trap and placed the box on it before he retired, so that the trap would go off if the box was lifted.
To Sagebrush's astonishment, he could not see any one near the box. And there was moonlight in the room.
To his greater astonishment, a gun snout was jammed into his right ear. He knew it was the nose of a gun because the sight cut him.
"Drop that hogleg!" gritted Hoke McGee's voice. Sagebrush thought about what a bullet going in his right ear might do to his brains, and let fall his six-gun.
"Polecats!" he said.
Hoke McGee came around from behind the bed, much pleased with himself.
"We was all rigged for you, smart puss," he chuckled. "We had the screws loose in the window lock and the window slide greased, and we had a hole poked in the wall so we could watch you from the other room. We saw you fix the rat trap. Sit still, you!"
Hoke unlocked the door, and the Lazy Y owner came in carrying a sawed-off shotgun.
"You tote the box," Hoke told him.
The owner strained with the box, then complained, "Danged if it ain't heavy!"
Sagebrush said, "I'll skin you ginks alive!"
"Shut up!" said Hoke. "Get movin'!"
SAGEBRUSH SMITH got out of bed and walked toward the front door, feeling—with his hands held open by his ears and in his shirt tails—very much like one of the donkeys.
"Hey," he muttered. "Lemme put on my boots!"
"Heh, heh!" said Hoke viciously.
Sagebrush began to feel as though he had waded into a spring of cold water.
"You gonna take me into the desert and turn me loose without any shoes?" he gritted.
"I wouldn't be surprised," Hoke McGee said. Sagebrush swallowed with discomfort. In the desert without shoes! Sun and weather had done something to the desert rock around Death Valley and it had become like broken glass—
Suddenly deciding he would take chances with guns instead of the desert, Sagebrush stepped through the front door—and pitched to one side.
It was ink dark on the porch. He hit some one. Whoever he bumped into fell down.
"Blast your hide!" said the one who had fallen. He spoke in a voice remarkably like that of a child.
Sagebrush popped his eyes at what was now happening in the doorway. A rather slender man had appeared in the lighted door. This man was lean, of average height. He wore fine cordovan gentleman's riding boots, well-tailored whipcord breeches, a checked sports coat, ascot tie, pearl-gray derby with a small, bright feather in the band. He carried a slender black cane.
This male fashion-plate jerked the cane apart at the handle; it became a sword with a lean, flashing blade. The dapper man was a wizard with the sword. The point licked out and perforated Hoke McGee's gun hand and Hoke bawled and dropped his gun.
The Lazy Y owner was carrying the box. He tried to put it down, tripped and fell, landing with the box atop him. He howled as the sword cane dived like a spark and left a red line across his cheek.
Next both Hoke McGee and the Lazy Y owner made loud, sighing noises as though very sleepy, and fell on their faces and made no more moves, except to breathe. They did continue breathing.
All this happened while Sagebrush was getting to his feet. The cowboy peered to see whom he had bumped into. Suspicions were correct; it was the apish individual he had kicked earlier in the night.
"The hairy spook again!" Sagebrush grunted.
Then the Lazy Y rannys arrived.
LAZY Y cowhands had a bad reputation. They were gun-toters, and more than one had ridden the "owl hoot" trail; had rustled cattle or engaged in other thievery. No one could say they were afraid of a fight where money was involved.
Hoke McGee must have told them there was money mixed up in this, because they came storming on to the porch with lanterns, rifles and revolvers. They came boiling, fighting.
Sagebrush grabbed a man around the neck with one hand, punched him with the other hand. He did very well. But some one stepped up and cracked him with a rifle butt and drove him against the ranch house wall so hard that he bounced. Next, he was down and high-heeled boots were walking on him.
The apish man and the dapper man were hemmed in. Backs to the ranch house wall, they fought. Some one threw a rifle; it caved in the well-dressed man's pearl-gray derby and did enough to his skull so that he kneeled down. Men landed on him. The apish man bawled, tried to rescue the other. He, too, went down.
Lazy Y hands piled on. A gun or two went off, but fighting was too close and it was too dark for effective lead-throwing. Then the fight was over suddenly and the Lazy Y had won with numbers.
"Get a rope," someone said. "We'll tie 'em up."
"I'll get it," a cowboy muttered.
He stepped off the porch, stopped.
"Who—who—who"—he pointed—"who's that?"
Sagebrush Smith, struck by the strangeness in the cowboy's voice, raised his head and looked. He saw the bronze man. It was the first time he had seen the bronze man. And he never forgot it.
The bronze man came out of the tall sagebrush and at first, walking out there in the moonlight, he seemed of average size. Then he came closer. He wasn't average size. Wasn't average anything. He seemed to grow, develop. He became a giant so perfectly proportioned that it was only when he was near other men with whom he could be compared that his tremendous stature was evident.
Sagebrush stared. It wasn't only the bronze man's size that gripped him. There was more; eyes. Even in the moonlight the man's eyes—like pools of flake gold—seemed to have a hypnotic compelling power. The man wore no hat and his hair fitted like a metallic skullcap, and was a bronze hue only slightly darker than his skin. When he moved his head tendons barred out in his neck; he walked with eerie lightness. And probably more than anything else, his calmness was impressive. He seemed entirely unconcerned.
He reached the porch and spoke. His voice was deep, cultured, remarkably toned, and had also a subtle, compelling power that was in keeping with the power of the man himself.
"Here is something," he said, "that might be interesting."
He held out a palm; an object that might have been a glass marble rolled off it, hit the porch floor with a faint, crunching sound, and became a wet spot. A wet spot for but an instant; then the wetness was gone and there was only the thin glistening of a broken, globular, glass container.
Sagebrush Smith was suddenly seized by the apish man. The fellow clutched Sagebrush's mouth and throat and shut off air from his lungs. Fighting to free himself, Sagebrush realized the other man was holding his breath, too.
Then a Lazy Y cowhand took in a deep breath and let it out in a sigh and got down on his knees. Ludicrously, the cowhand peered at the porch floor as though hunting a soft place; then he laid down. The other Lazy Y men did the same thing in quick succession until there was no one but the strange bronze man left standing.
Fully thirty additional seconds passed during which Sagebrush was not allowed to get air. He knew his face was purple. But his struggles against the apish man were absolutely futile.
Then the bronze man spoke—he, too, had held his breath.
"The anaesthetic gas has dissipated by now," he said.
THE apish man and the well-dressed man—the latter wasn't so well-dressed now—got to their feet. Both gulped air in the fashion of men who had been holding their breath.
"I thought you was in the plane headed for Meander Surett's laboratory," the apish man said sheepishly.