“Squeamish, eh?” jeered1 Shoup, his eyes two points of light and boring into Lenning’s brain. “You’ve got a lot of cause, after the way you’ve acted, to get on your high horse with me.”
“You’re a plain thief!” gasped2 Lenning.
“Very plain,” sneered3 the other; “you’re worse, Lenning, only it’s not so plain.”
Lenning jumped at Shoup with clenched4 fists.
“What do you mean by that sort of talk?” he demanded chokingly.
“Don’t think you can scare me, Jode. You can’t. If you want a tussle5, don’t think for a minute that you’d have the easy end of it. I know you better than anybody else does—better even than your fool of an uncle, who let you pull the wool over his eyes for so long. You’re a coward. When you saw the money in that old woman’s hand bag, you wanted it just as much as I did, only you didn’t have the nerve to take it. Well, I had the nerve; and I was so clever about it that she’ll never know it’s gone until she wants to pay a bill. Now get a grip on yourself and don’t act like a blooming idiot.”
Lenning shivered slightly. The gleaming eyes of his companion were still boring into his brain, and somehow they robbed him of all desire to resent with his fists the hard words Shoup had spoken.
20
“It seems to me as though, if you’re bound to steal, you could pick out some one else for a victim,” Lenning grumbled6. “That poor old woman—I can see her face now, with that lock of gray hair falling down from under that rusty7 old hat and—and—oh, it makes me sick just to think of it!”
He turned away in gloomy protest. Shoup laughed.
“Fine!” said he. “I didn’t know, Jode, that there was so much maudlin8 sentiment wrapped up in you. How do you know the old lady is so poor, eh? You can’t always judge from appearances. The biggest miser9 I ever knew—an old curmudgeon10 that looked like a tramp, had more than a hundred thousand in the bank. There’s two hundred in this roll, and it will stake us until luck begins coming our way.”
The first shock of disgust had passed and Lenning began to take a little interest in his friend’s recent achievement.
“You didn’t lose that morocco case at all, eh?” he asked.
“Not at all; that was merely an excuse for me to go back to the stage and pull off my little play.”
“Suppose I had gone with you to help hunt for the case?”
“I was pretty sure you wouldn’t.”
“Well, how did you manage it?”
“Easy. The old lady was still on the front seat, and when she saw me coming she brightened up a lot. She wanted to know why I was coming back, and I told her that I had lost something in the trail and had come back to look for it. The hand bag lay on the seat beside her. I leaned over the side of the wagon11, and began to talk. I called her attention to the wall of the cañon, pointing out a queer formation of the rocks, with my left hand,
21
and, with my right, opening the bag and taking out the money. She never suspected a thing. It was about the easiest job I ever pulled off.”
The shameless steps which he had followed in committing the robbery were recited by Shoup without a shadow of feeling or regret; on the contrary, there was a boasting note in his voice, as though he had accomplished12 something of which he was proud.
“You’re—you’re a coyote!” muttered Lenning.
“I’m a fox, Jode,” laughed Shoup, “and a slick one, believe me. You couldn’t have turned a trick like that without bungling13.”
“I’d as soon think of stealing pennies out of a blind man’s cup. That dope has killed your conscience. I don’t believe you have a heart in you—when you’re under the influence of that fiendish stuff.”
“Oh, cut that out!” grunted14 Shoup. “We’ve made a raise and we’re going to use the money. We need it—you know we need it. Come on. We’ll see how quick we can get into Ophir and out again. We’ll hire horses and ride to the gulch15. It won’t do for us to stay long in the town.”
They started again, Lenning dragging along, moodily16 thoughtful. His thoughts, whatever they were, must have been far from pleasant. Shoup, abnormally keen while under the spell of the slow poison, seemed to know what his companion was thinking about.
“You’re asking yourself, Jode,” said he jestingly, “how you ever happened to fall so low as to be a friend of mine. You were pretty well down yourself before we got into each other’s company this last time. While you’re thinking what a conscienceless wretch17 I am, let your mind circle about yourself. What have you got to be proud of?”
22
“Nothing,” snarled18 Jode.
“That is correct. If we can pick our bone with Merriwell, we’ll both feel a whole lot better; when that’s finished, we’ll clear out of this country and make a long jump to Frisco. That’s the town! We can do big things there.”
“What sort of things?” queried19 Lenning suspiciously.
“Oh, something safe and profitable. I’m well acquainted, and the friends I have are the kind who’ll help a fellow when he’s down. They’ll take you in on my say-so, and, if you prove loyal to them, you’ll find that they will prove loyal to you, in fair weather or foul20. We——”
Lenning cut into Shoup’s remarks with a sharp exclamation21. “Duck!” he exclaimed; “get into the brush—quick!”
At this same moment, Lenning suited his action to the word and dove pell-mell into the chaparral beside the trail. Without understanding the reason for this sudden move, Shoup did likewise. The next moment, he heard a tramp of horses’ hoofs22 in the trail. Riders were coming, and Lenning had been crafty23 enough to understand that it was not well, after the robbery, for them to be seen in that part of the cañon.
Shoup chuckled24. This meant, as he looked at it, that Lenning had accepted the situation and was eager to help his companion avoid the consequences.
Three horses came along at a gallop25. Two of the horses had a wagon harness upon them. One of these animals was ridden by a flannel-shirted man, who was probably the stage driver. The third animal was a saddle horse, and was ridden by a young fellow with snapping black eyes and in cowboy rig. One horse in the stage team carried a wagon wheel lashed26 to its back.
23
The horses and their riders flashed by the thicket27 where Lenning and Shoup lay concealed28, and were quickly out of sight and hearing. Lenning crawled slowly back into the trail.
“If we hadn’t been quick,” said he, as Shoup joined him, “they’d have seen us.”
“But they didn’t,” answered Shoup, “so it’s nothing to worry over. What’s the cowboy along for?”
“Give it up. The cowboy was Barzy Blunt, of the Bar Z Ranch29. Ever heard of him?”
“No, but there are several cowboys I never heard of, Jode. How has this fellow Blunt ever distinguished30 himself?”
“Well, when Merriwell first came to Ophir, Blunt got a grouch31 at him. Blunt is a cowboy athlete, but never had any special training. He thought Merriwell was a conceited32 Easterner, and made up his mind he’d take a few falls out of him. He tried it.”
“And made a failure, eh?”
“How did you know Blunt failed?”
“Guessed it. It takes a pretty good athlete to beat Merriwell at any sort of sport. But go on.”
“As you say, Blunt failed. Time after time he tried to best Merriwell, but was always beaten out. At last they became friends. There’s an old professor with Merriwell and his pals33. They found him holed away in the Picketpost Mountains, holding down a gold ‘prospect.’ Merriwell helped the professor save the ‘prospect,’ and by and by it turned out that the man who had taken Blunt to raise had a grubstake interest in the professor’s claim. The man was dead, but his widow came in for the good thing. The syndicate that has the big gold mine in Ophir, I understand, have paid, or are going to pay, fifty thousand for the mine. That will put Barzy Blunt
24
on Easy Street, for everybody says half the purchase price will come to him when the widow is done with it.”
“Some fellows certainly have a habit of dropping into a good thing,” murmured Shoup.
“It wasn’t a habit with Blunt. He had about as hard a time getting along as any fellow you ever saw.”
“So he and Merriwell were enemies, and now they’re friends?”
“Yes.”
“Look out, Jode!” joked Shoup. “Maybe Merriwell will win you over before you have a chance to settle accounts with him.”
“No danger,” grunted Lenning. “Merriwell hasn’t any more use for me than I have for him. Merriwell wouldn’t wipe his feet on me, I reckon, and you can bet your last sou I wouldn’t give him a chance to try. He knows the sort of father I had, and that I’m headed wrong as a birthright, and will go wrong in spite of fate.”
“What a fellow inherits he can’t get away from,” declared Shoup. “Merriwell, it seems, understands that. When you know a thing’s true, what’s the use of trying to buck34 against it? We’re all born with a handicap of some sort in the race of life; we’ve got to win by doing the thing that comes easiest.”
This was the logic35 of a drugged conscience, of a fellow who was not himself at the very moment he brought up the argument. For a lad like Jode Lenning, already started on the downhill road, such a fellow was a dangerous companion.
“I don’t know whether you’ve got the right of that, or not,” said Lenning, “but I hope you haven’t. There are times when I want to turn over a leaf and be different—and never a time more than right now, since my uncle has kicked me out; but——” He hesitated.
25
“But you want to hand Merriwell a testimonial of your kind regards before the leaf is turned, eh?” grinned Shoup.
“I’ll show him,” snapped Lenning, “that he had no business butting36 into my affairs.”
“We’ll both show him, Len. I can be of more help to you than you think. We’ll get horses in Ophir and ride for the gulch. After we’re through with our work there, we’ll clear out of this part of the country and pull off some big things.”
“I wish to thunder,” said Lenning, “that I could look into the future and see just what is going to happen.”
Had he been able to do that, Jode Lenning would probably have received the surprise of his life.
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收听单词发音
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1
jeered
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| v.嘲笑( jeer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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3
sneered
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| 讥笑，冷笑( sneer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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clenched
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| v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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tussle
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| n.&v.扭打，搏斗，争辩 | |
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6
grumbled
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| 抱怨( grumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 发牢骚； 咕哝； 发哼声 | |
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rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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maudlin
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| adj.感情脆弱的，爱哭的 | |
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miser
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| n.守财奴，吝啬鬼 (adj.miserly) | |
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curmudgeon
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| n. 脾气暴躁之人，守财奴，吝啬鬼 | |
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wagon
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| n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车 | |
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12
accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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13
bungling
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| adj.笨拙的，粗劣的v.搞糟，完不成( bungle的现在分词 )；笨手笨脚地做；失败；完不成 | |
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14
grunted
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| （猪等）作呼噜声( grunt的过去式和过去分词 )； （指人）发出类似的哼声； 咕哝着说 | |
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15
gulch
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| n.深谷，峡谷 | |
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moodily
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| adv.喜怒无常地；情绪多变地；心情不稳地；易生气地 | |
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wretch
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| n.可怜的人，不幸的人；卑鄙的人 | |
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18
snarled
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| v.（指狗）吠，嗥叫， （人）咆哮( snarl的过去式和过去分词 )；咆哮着说，厉声地说 | |
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queried
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| v.质疑，对…表示疑问( query的过去式和过去分词 )；询问 | |
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foul
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| adj.污秽的；邪恶的；v.弄脏；妨害；犯规；n.犯规 | |
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exclamation
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| n.感叹号，惊呼，惊叹词 | |
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hoofs
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| n.（兽的）蹄，马蹄( hoof的名词复数 )v.（兽的）蹄，马蹄( hoof的第三人称单数 ) | |
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crafty
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| adj.狡猾的，诡诈的 | |
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chuckled
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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gallop
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| v./n.(马或骑马等)飞奔；飞速发展 | |
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lashed
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| adj.具睫毛的v.鞭打( lash的过去式和过去分词 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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thicket
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| n.灌木丛，树林 | |
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concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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ranch
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| n.大牧场，大农场 | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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31
grouch
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| n.牢骚，不满；v.抱怨 | |
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32
conceited
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| adj.自负的，骄傲自满的 | |
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33
pals
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| n.朋友( pal的名词复数 )；老兄；小子；（对男子的不友好的称呼）家伙 | |
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buck
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| n.雄鹿，雄兔；v.马离地跳跃 | |
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35
logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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36
butting
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| 用头撞人（犯规动作） | |
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