Читать книгу Hands Up! онлайн

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A hail brought Scotty, the lean, tobacco-juice-attenuated operator on to the platform, rubbing his eyes from sleep and with dishevelled hair, the ends of his sparse moustache, which he had a habit of chewing, draggling in his mouth. He simply called out an oath (in a way common to the place) at sight of our burden, and hastened, flurried and jerkily, to our aid, helped us to carry Douglas into the depôt office and lay him on the floor there, and then he rushed to his instrument to call up a doctor from Lone Tree. His tap-tapping over he turned to consider Douglas, who now broke into pitiable moans.

"By——, Apache," said he. "It gives him a twist. I think I'd rather be a stiff than like that."

"Oh, I don't know," said he who was called Apache, and raised and nodded his head in a determined fashion. I noticed then, for the first time, that he wore very little gold ear-rings. The light caught them as he moved his head so. "I'm not so sure about that. Life is not worth living for the man who can't get a move on things, for the man who is, as you might say, waiting—for a man with a mine two hundred miles beyond rail-head and he maybe sixty years old and the railway not liable to extend for twenty years. He does not want a pompous funeral, and he is not going to eat and drink his gravestone. Waiting is bad when there is no show. If you are five hundred dollars in debt to the hotel-keeper and your wages are only forty-five, it's bad waiting for that forty-five, especially if you want to buy a new undershirt and a pair of pants. It must be bad waiting in a cell for a hanging. But Life's worth living when things are moving—Life's worth living for the prospector when the track-layers are moving a mile a day nearer his prospective mine and he's only ætat fifty. If he was only twenty-one it would be futile, for he'd be broke again long before he was forty. Life's worth living if you owe your hotel-proprietor last month's grub and bed—thirty dollars—and have a hundred dollars coming to you at end of the month. You'll be liable to celebrate paying him off," he added, "and go broke again. It's all right waiting even for the hangman in the condemned cell if you've got a file up your sleeve. Yes, sir—and Alf Douglas is not so bad just now as you might think. He's putting up a fight and you've wired for the doc. Life is not a bed of roses—and only a man who thinks it is, is going to go and say anything so damn futile. There's something to be said for pain, too, my friend. Pain will teach you how to grip your jaws together and I never heard that a cod-fished-mouthed man was much use. Got any cigarettes?"