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" 'Better to be a fool than a knave,' " quoted Noble. He was
smiling, but his eyes were measuring Benton with sudden attention and
knowledge.
Benton came to his feet ready for trouble. "What was that you
called me?"
Cherry Noble walked to the foot of the steps where Benton stood.
"Friend," he" spoke gently, still smiling, "I didn't call you, but if you
heard your name just keep a-coming."
Benton was irresolute. Something in the easy movement and
confidence of the big man disturbed him. "You don't make sense!" he said
irritably. "What's the matter? Are you crazy?"
Noble chuckled, his big hands on his hips. "Now as to that," he
said judiciously, "there's a division of opinion. Some say yes, some say no.
Me, I've not rightly decided, but at any rate I'm not a very wise man."
"Feller back in Missouri when I was about hip-high to a short
burro, he give me five books, he did. He said, 'Son, you take these books and
you read them. Then you read them through again and then you ponder on 'em.
After that you give them to somebody else, but there'll be something that will
stay with you all the days of your life. I'm giving you the greatest gift any
man can give to another.' "
Cherry Noble put one huge booted foot on the step. "Now I read
them there books, and more times than twice. One was the Bible, mighty good
reading whether a man is of a religious turn or not. Another was a bunch of
poetry like by a man named Shakespeare. That one only made occasional sense to
me until the third time around and then everything began to fall into place,
and it's stayed in my mind ever since. Then there was a book on law, or that's
what I was told, by Blackstone. Seemed to me that book made a lot of sense,
and mostly it was rules and ideas on how folks can get along together. There
was another by a man named Plato that seemed to me conversations with some
other folks, but one that worried me some was an account of the death of this
Socrates."
"Seems they had something against him, and the powers that were
said he should take poison hemlock. Well, from the account of what happened
afterward it seemed to me the man was writing about something he never
actually saw because we have a sight of poison hemlock in parts of the country
where I've lived and it's a very agonizing death, no way so calm and easy as
this man seemed to have it."
"Man told me later, a man who was up on such things, that Plato
wasn't even there when it happened. I don't think a man should write things
unless he can write the truth about it, or as near as he can come to it. The
other book was some sayings by Jefferson, Franklin, and the like, the sort of
conclusions any reasonable man comes to in a lifetime."
"Now I read those books up one side and down the other and nothing
in those books told me I was crazy and nothing in them told me I was a wise
man, either. So"  he smiled cheerfully  "I just let 'er rest, an' that's a
good way to do with arguments."
Noble mounted the steps and went into the store and Benton stared
after him. He spat into the dust. Now what kind of a man was that?
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Hack, another of the bysitters, glanced slyly at Benton. "He sure
is big," he commented.
"Size doesn't make the man!" Benton said contemptuously.
The older man chuckled, looking Benton up and down. "Now that's
what I've always said!" Hack agreed. "That's what I'll always say!"
The door opened and Noble stepped out. He had two one hundred
pound sacks of flour under one arm and held another by the top. He walked to
his pack mules and began strapping on the sacks. Then he went around to the
corral and returned with three horses. Bringing out more supplies, he strapped
them on the pack saddles he had brought along with the horses.
Benton had the feeling he had come out on the short end of the
exchange and did not like it. Nor was he sure just how it had happened. He
watched Noble loading up with growing displeasure. "Some Mormons tried to
settle over there one time and the injuns run 'em out. The Green boys went in
there with cattle, and the Greens were killed. You ain't got a chance back in
there alone. There was six or seven of the Greens.
"Besides," he argued, "how would you make a living? Suppose your
cherries grew? Where would you sell 'em?"
Cherry Noble's chuckle was rich and deep, "Why, friend, I don't
worry about that. The Lord will provide, says I, and when folks come they will
find the earth flowering like the gardens of paradise, with fat black cherries
growing, and if by chance the injuns get me my trees will still be growing.
For I say he who plants a tree is a servant of God, which I heard somewhere
long ago. Even if there's no fruit on the limbs there'll be shade for the
weary and a coolness in summer."
"You talk like a damned sky pilot," Benton scoffed.
"Well, I'm not one. Nor am I really what you'd call a religious
man, nor a learned one. That feller who gave me the books said, 'Son, it isn't
how many books you read, it's what you get from those you do read. You read
those books I gave you and neither life, nor death, nor man will hold any
fears for you.' That's what the man said, and he seems to have been right."
"You'll need a lot more than talk if those Piutes jump you!"
Benton replied.
Noble chuckled again. "If they don't understand that kind of talk
I can always use this!" He picked an empty whiskey bottle from the dust and
flipped it into the air. As the bottle reached its high point he palmed his
six-shooter and fired.
The shot smashed the bottle, his second and third shots broke
fragments of the bottle into still smaller fragments.
Lay Benton sat down on the top step, shocked and a little sick to
the stomach. To think he had been hunting trouble with a man who could shoot
like that!
Noble swung into the saddle on the big mule, a huge and handsome
creature who only swished his tail at the great weight. "Come visit me," he
invited, "where you find me there will be green grass and trees, and if you
give me time there will be black cherries ripening in the sun!"
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"He'll get himself killed," Benton said sourly.
"Maybe," Hack agreed, "but injuns take to his kind."
They watched him ride down the dusty street toward the trail west,
and he only stopped once, to let Ruth McGann cross in front of him. She was
going over to the Border house to borrow a cup of sugar ... at least that was
what she said.
They saw that he spoke to her, and they might as well have
overheard it because old man Border repeated the words.
Noble drew up and gallantly swept the hat from his head. "Beauty
before industry, ma'am. You may pass before I raise a dust that might dim
those lovely eyes."
She looked up at him suspiciously. "My name is Noble," he said,
"and I hope that sometimes I am. They call me Cherry because it's cherries I
plant wherever I've time to stop. And your name?"
"Ruth," she replied, her eyes taking in the great expanse of chest
and shoulder, "and where might you be going, riding out that way?"
"Like the Hebrew children," he said, "I go into the wilderness,
but I shall return. I shall come back for you, Ruth, and then you shall say to
me as did Ruth of the Bible, 'Wither thou goest, I will go; and where thou
lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God, my God.' "
Ruth looked him over coolly. Seventeen and pert, she had hair like
fire seen through smoke, and eyes of hazel. The prettiest girl in all that
country it was said, but with eyes for no man. "Oh, I will, will I? You've a
smooth tongue, big man. What else do you have?"
"Two hands and a heart. What else will I need?"
"You'll need a head," she replied calmly. "Now be off with you. I
have work to do."
"Well spoken!" He replaced his hat on his head and as Ruth passed [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]