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Read Ebook: Latest Magic Being original conjuring tricks by Hoffmann Professor
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Ebook has 159 lines and 5337 words, and 4 pages
"You look kinda naked tonight, Erd," Gloria kidded.
Neff wiped steak juice from his chin and stared at her breasts. It used to excite him, but now it was just habit. It was better than looking at red-smeared lips that smiled and eyes that didn't, eyes that said, "Don't forget the tip, you filthy bastard!"
Funny. Hang a gun on any other citizen in town and people would stare. Take the gun off of Erd Neff and people make cracks.
He did feel naked.
"I didn't order this damned succotash!"
"It's free with the steak dinner, Erd."
Go ahead, pinch my leg like the harvesting crews do. I'm free with the dinner, too. Like the ketchup. Like the mustard and the salt and pepper and the steak sauce and the sugar and the extra butter if you ask for it, just don't forget the tip.
Clarence Hogan, the fry-cook, came around the counter and leaned on the booth table beside Gloria. "You don't like succotash? How about some nice peas, Erd?"
Clarence was Gloria's husband.
Pimp!
"Put some ice-cream on my pie," Neff said. He looked up at Clarence. "No, I don't want any goddamned peas!"
They brought his pie and left him alone. He finished it and felt in his pocket for the tip. He changed his mind. To hell with Gloria and her fat leg! The steak was tough.
He paid the check and went out. The sky was pink yet. Later in the week the sunsets would be blood-red, as the great combines increased in number and cruised the rippling ocean of wheat, leaving bristly wakes and a sky-clogging spray of dust.
Neff's busiest season. Damn that dog! Damn Collin Burns!
His hand brushed his leg where the leather holster should be. Damned laws that men made. Laws that acquitted him of homicide and then snatched away his only weapon of self-defense because he shot a yapping dog.
As he got in his car Collin Burns came out of the station. He tossed Neff's gun through the open window onto the seat. "Here's your property. The Marshal came in, and he changed everybody's mind. It's going to cost you a hundred dollars and a new pup for the little girl, probably. Here's the subpoena. Tuesday at ten."
"I don't get it."
"The Marshal said to let you fight your own battles."
Neff started the car and let the clutch out. The Marshal knew his way around. The transient harvesting crews were a wild bunch. If word got out that Neff was unarmed, packing thousands of dollars the length of the county, the enforcement people would have a lot of extra work on their hands.
He parked behind the warehouse, next to the railroad tracks.
He came around front, unlocked the big door, pulled it shut behind him and bolted it. The warehouse was jet black now, but he knew every inch of the place. He could fire his pistol almost as accurately at a sound as at a visible target.
He practiced on rats.
Holding a pocket flash, he worked the combination. As the final tumbler fell silently, a faint, raspy screech came to his ears, like a board tearing its rusty nails loose under the persuasion of a wrecking bar. He listened a minute, then he levered the bolts back, stepped into the vault-room, closed the door and shot the mechanical bolts.
Sure. Someone was out there, but they'd get damned tired before morning. He flicked on the light and touched the other wall switch beside it. The powerful blower and sucker fans cleared out the musty air and rat-stink.
John rustled in the cage, blinking at the sudden light. "Hi, Neff! Meat! Meat! Meat!"
Smart little devil! Neff sometimes brought him a scrap from his dinner, but he hadn't thought to tonight. He sucked at his teeth and pulled out a tiny string of steak. "Here. Bite my finger and I'll poke both your eyes out."
John picked the thread of gristle from Neff's finger with his fore-paws and devoured it, trembling with pleasure. Neff lifted the cage. "Okay, now let's have a few tricks."
At once John made for the can of wheat. "Get outta there!" Neff scooped him up and dropped him on the desk, snapping his tail with a forefinger. John whirled, laid his ears back and opened his mouth. At bay, the brown rat, Neff knew, is the most ferocious rodent of the 2000 species, but Neff held his hand out daring John to bite.
Neff knew all about rats. More than anybody in the world knew about rats. When you live among them for three decades you find out about their cunning wariness, fecundity, secretiveness, boldness, omnivorous and voracious appetites. Fools reviled them as predators and scavengers. Neff appreciated them for what they really are: The most adaptable mammal on earth.
John was smart but no smarter than the rest. Neff had proved this by teaching every rat he captured alive to talk.
Neff didn't know about the others, but he knew about rats.
Keep them hungry and lonely for a mate. Hurt them. Torture them. To hell with this reward business. Rats are like men. Mentally lazy. They'll go for bait, sure, but they'll go faster to escape pain--a thousand times faster.
And rats have lived with man from the first. They have a feeling for language like the human brat. Between partitions, inches from a man's head when he lies in bed talking to his wife, under a man's feet while he's eating, over his head in the warehouse rafters while he's working. Always, just inches or feet away from man, running through sewers, hiding in woodpiles, freight-cars, ships, barns, slaughter-house, skulking down black alleys, listening, hiding, stealing, always listening.
Yes, rats know about man, but rats had never known a man like Erd Neff, a man who hated all mankind. A man who chose a rat for a companion in preference to one of his own kind. Rats named John learned about Neff. They learned that his tones and inflections had specific meaning. They learned very fast under the stabbing prod of the marshmallow fork. With just enough food to keep them alive, their blind ferocity changed into painful attention. They learned to squeak and squawk and form the sounds into a pattern with their motile tongues. In weeks and months, they learned what the human brat learned in years.
"Stand up like a goddamned man!"
John stood up, his tail the third point of the support.
"Say the alphabet."
"Eh--bih--fih--dih--ih--eff--jih--etch--"
Neff lit a cigar and watched the smoke float away from the ceiling blower and vanish into the overhead vent in the far corner. He bobbed one foot in time to the squeaky rhythm of the recitation. He took no exception to John's failure with "I," "s", and "z". The other Johns had been unable to handle them, too.
"Hungrih, Neff. Hungrih!"
The big man picked out three grains of wheat. He noticed the can was almost empty. One by one he handed the kernels to his pet, waiting for John's "Tinkoo!" in between.
"Mur! Mur!"
John dropped to all fours and retreated. Usually Neff slapped him in the belly when he used that tone. But Neff was bemused tonight. He kept listening for sounds, sounds that he knew could never penetrate the thick walls.
They were out there, he was sure. Another damned fool or two, flashing a light around, trying to figure out something. Neff remembered one pair who had even tried nitroglycerin. He saw the burns on the outside of the door the next morning.
Amateurs! Nobody knew for sure just how much money Neff kept in the old desk, and big-time pros wouldn't tackle a job like this without a pretty fair notion of the loot. For all they knew, maybe he mailed it to an out-of-town bank.
"Okay, fetch the pencil."
John jumped from the desk and moved toward the open door of the shower-stall where Neff had thrown the pencil stub. He paused by the wheat can, then scurried on to get the pencil. He climbed Neff's leg and dropped the pencil into the open palm.
"Smart punks up at State College. So you can't teach a rat anything but mazes and how to go nuts from electric shocks, eh? Wouldn't they be surprised to meet you, John?"
"Hungrih!"
"You're always hungry!"
"Meat! Meat!"
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