The Cure of Silver Cañon

by Max Brand

  She was at the mouth of the narrow street on which the silversmith had his shop when two men went by, stepping large and fast, and she heard them saying, “Did you see the kind of a fool smile he wore when he picked up his drink?”

  “Yeah, like a punch-drunk bum in the ring … grinning … pretending he’s not hurt. This here Slip, he’s had the whole world buffaloed with a big bluff. Say, maybe that’s why they call him Señor Coyote …”

  “You’d think he’d rather have died.”

  That was it. That was what one would think.

  She went down the alley into the little cramped courtyard of Pinelli, with the sense of winter dampness underfoot and in the air. When she leaned through the window, she could see the length of big Liddell stretched on the bed. He did not have a lamp lit. Enough illumination came from the hall to show her he was facedown. She slid through the window and dropped to the floor.

  “Who’s that?” asked Liddell.

  “Nobody,” Skeeter responded as she closed the hall door.

  She was glad of the darkness. It would be easier to talk in the black of the night. It would have been better if no stars looked in through the window, showing the narrow roof of the next building and letting the thought of the exterior world come to them. In the murk she found the bed and sat on her heels beside it.

  “Listen, Slip,” she said. “I know how you feel. Once I went to school and, having the girls look at me and my funny rig, it made me terrible sick. I used to be so happy when Friday night came, that I cried. Yeah. Me. I really cried. And I used to nearly cry again when Monday morning came. I know what I felt when I had to hop my first freight, too. That was five years back, when Pop still had some spring in his legs.”

  “Is he your father?” asked Liddell.

  “That old … what do you think?”

  “No, I don’t think he is.”

  “Thanks, Slip. But he’s been pretty good to me in a lot of ways … and I’m going to take care of him when he gets too old and mean to make his way. I didn’t come to talk about him and me. Slip … I was at the window of the Royal and I saw. And the whole town is saying that you took water.”

  She heard his body turn but she said nothing. After a moment she reached through the darkness and by a sure instinct found his hand. It closed hard and suddenly over hers.

  She said, “Sometimes it looks to me like we only have so much stuff in us. Just so much and no more. You’ve been all over. I know where you’ve been. All up and down the line I’ve met shacks and tramps and straight people that told me things you’ve done. Now the nerve is gone out of you. Courage, that’s like strength. It can’t last forever. It’s like some people live fast and die young, and some people live slow, and last a long time. But each of them do the same amount of living. Isn’t that true?”

  “Perhaps it is,” said Liddell.

  She could feel a tension in him, and knew he was listening as no one ever had listened to her before. “Look at you,” said the girl. “The way you’ve lived is half a dozen lives. That’s why it doesn’t matter so much if you should have to stop living.”

  “D’you think I have to die, now?” asked Liddell.

  A sob came up in her throat and almost strangled her. She choked it back. The effort knocked her voice to pieces when she spoke. “You’ve gotta go out and meet Heath, and McArthur, and Soapy Jones,” she said.

  He was silent.

  “There’s thousands and thousands of folks that know about you, Slip. They’ve heard about you and they wouldn’t want to hear that you’d shown the white feather. Right now there’s something alive that belongs to you. It’s part of your name. Young fellas that get into a pinch ask themselves what Slip Liddell would do at a time like that. But if they were to hear what happened tonight …”

  “It’s already happened. I’m dead to the world.”

  “The dead could up and rise again,” panted the girl. “You could go and laugh in Heath’s face, even with Pudge and Soapy behind him. You gotta go and laugh in his face. What’s three men to the real Slip Liddell? To Señor Coyote? What did he do to the three shacks down in the yards at Phoenix? But unless you stand up to ’em, everything good that’s ever been said about you is gonna die in the throats that said it. It’s better for you to die, Slip. Don’t turn your name into cheapness, Slip. A coyote would run away, Slip …”

  “I wonder,” said Liddell.

  “Listen to me,” remarked the girl, “if I could have my way, I’d follow you around the world like a squaw and I wouldn’t care. I know what you’ve been, and that would be good enough for me. And I’d take you off somewhere up in the mountains where you’d never have to bump into tough mugs any more. I’d fix you up fine, Slip. If you wanted to marry me, that would be swell. If you didn’t want to marry me, I wouldn’t care. I’d cook for you, and make the house shine, and keep your clothes right … and you’d always have a slick horse to ride and money in your pocket and me and Pop would go out once in a while and just rake in the dough. We’d play the big joints and just rake it in.”

  “It sounds good to me,” Liddell said softly. “But can’t we do that anyway?”

  “We can’t, Slip,” said the girl.

  She got up and stood at the window, drinking in deeper breaths of the air. The silence drew out long between them.

  “Come back to me a minute, Skeeter, will you?” he asked.

  “If I touch you again, I’ll be crying like a fool,” she said.

  “You want me to go back to the Royal now?” Liddell asked.

  “You mean that you would go?” gasped Skeeter.

  “I’d try to,” said Liddell.

  “Did me coming and talking, did that help?”

  “It put a different kind of a heart in me,” he told her.

  “Then thank God that I came. Dying isn’t hard, Slip. You’ll find out that it isn’t hard …”

  “Are you sure?” asked Liddell.

  “I know it isn’t. Once I nearly drowned. I got under the ice and I couldn’t break through. I was nine or ten or something. And it wasn’t so bad. A funny thing was the way the world looked through the ice. The naked trees sort of blurred over, like there was leaves and things on them. And somehow it seemed to me that the whole world was full of summer, outside of the ice. But it wasn’t bad. Just kind of choking a good deal.”

  “Come here,” said Liddell. She came to the edge of the bed. “Sit down by me,” said Liddell.

  “One way or another, I’ve been telling you that I like you a lot,” said Skeeter. “That wouldn’t make you be foolish with me, would it?”

  “I hope not,” said Liddell.

  “Because that wouldn’t be a very good last thing for you to do in the world,” said Skeeter.

  “No, it wouldn’t,” he agreed.

  She sat down beside him. He put a big arm around her, turning on his side.

  “How did you get out from under the ice?” asked Liddell.

  “Don’t say anything,” whispered Skeeter. “It’s sort of wonderful, just being here close. I mean, it’s wonderful for me.”

  He said nothing, obediently. One of her hands found his face and remained touching it, the fingertips moving softly as though it were a blind hand, reading.

  After a long time she said, “Suppose that sky pilots and the preachers and the teachers were right? Suppose that praying did any good? Wouldn’t that make a fool out of me? Suppose that praying would jam the gun of Soapy Jones and make Pudge McArthur miss and leave only Heath for you to face. Just supposing that prayer was worth a damn and that I could somehow save you …?”

  “You ever come close to praying, Skeeter?” asked Liddell.

  “What’s the good?” she answered. “In the jungle or on the main stem or on the rattlers, or wherever you are, a fast hand and a quick lam are what get away with the goods, so far as I can see �
�� there wouldn’t be time for praying except afterward. What do you think, Slip? Is there a God tucked away somewhere?”

  After a bit of consideration he said, “Not the kind that will stop a roulette wheel at the right place.”

  “Or make your old shoes last,” she suggested.

  “Or give you another stake,” said Liddell.

  “Or take the frost out of a midnight ride on the rods,” she added. “But I don’t want to talk about Him. I want to talk about you. What chance would you have, if you went down there to the dance, this evening? If you went down and faced them?”

  Instead of answering, he countered with rather a queer question. “Up there at the Royal you saw Heath and Pudge and Soapy, all three?”

  “Yes,” she answered, “and Soapy with his rod out ready to shoot.”

  “Were any of them spending a lot of money?” he asked.

  “Not that I saw. I only saw you, at the last minute, taking the drink.”

  She buried her face in her hands, shuddering. The big hand of Liddell patted her back.

  She broke out, “Am I wrong, Slip? Had you better get out of here and run for it? If you take it on the lam, I’d go with you.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” answered Liddell. “You’d rather run away with a ghost than with me after my name’s dead.”

  “Maybe that’s right. I wonder,” said the girl. “You get a name by just playing around and doing the things that are fun when you want to do them. And the name gets bigger and bigger. And after a while, it’s so big that you’ve got to die for it. That’s a funny thing, Slip, isn’t it?”

  He was silent till she exclaimed, “You wouldn’t go and change your mind back to the other side again, would you?”

  “No,” said Liddell.

  “That’s having the old nerve again,” said the girl. “I can hear what they’re gonna say. They’re gonna say, ‘We thought there was only this kid. We thought there was McArthur and Soapy Jones on the side all the time, with their guns ready. And that was why Slip hesitated a little. But finally he crashed through. He went down with his guns smoking. He never did a finer thing than the day he died.’ They’ll talk about you like that. Everybody that ever speaks about you is gonna look up, is what they’re gonna do.” Her voice broke into bits again. “I’ll be going along,” she said.

  She stood up. Liddell rose with her.

  “If I had clothes or something, I could be down there at the finish,” said Skeeter.

  “Take this money and get clothes,” Liddell suggested.

  “All the stores are closed up tight.”

  “Take this money and see if you can’t pry a store open, Skeeter.”

  “Yeah. Maybe I could.” Her hand closed feebly over a wad of bills. “You want me there?” she asked.

  “I sure want you there,” said Liddell. “But so far as I’m concerned, these clothes of yours are plenty good.”

  “Everybody’d laugh at me,” she answered. “Slip, it’s kind of funny. This morning I was thinking that we had years and years and years laid out ahead when we’d be seeing each other now and then, and you’d be laid up in the back of my mind like a bit of summer weather, and all that. And now here it is the end, already. It makes me feel queer. It makes me feel kind of sick in the stomach … And goodbye.”

  She was out the window in a flash, but in the open air she turned again. “Should I come back? Would you kiss me goodbye?” she asked.

  “You don’t have to come back for that,” he said. And he picked up her hand and leaned over and kissed it with a long, light pressure of his lips.

  Afterward she lifted the hand to her cheek. She began to laugh, but the laughter staggered and went out suddenly.

  “Slip,” she whispered. “I’m not going to live long after you.”

  “Stop talking rot!” he commanded.

  “I never could be another man’s,” said Skeeter.

  “Wait, Skeeter …” he called, leaning across the windowsill.

  But she already was gone into the night.

  After that he paused for a moment, lit the lamp in his room, and then smoked half of a cigarette before his brain cleared. He went up to the second floor and tapped on a door.

  “Hello?” called Dolores.

  “Come to the dance with me,” invited Liddell.

  She pulled the door open. She was only partly dressed. Some of her makeup had not been put on so that she seemed to stand half in light and half in shadow.

  “Did you ask me to go with you, Señor Jimmy?” she repeated. Her face had no expression.

  “That’s right. We haven’t stepped out for a long time,” said Liddell.

  “Ah, but I’m not the right size, am I?” she asked.

  “You’d do fine for me,” said Liddell.

  “Ah, but I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t!” cried Dolores. “I’m not nearly big enough for you to hide behind my skirts, am I, Señor Coyote?” There was shrill irony in her voice as she said it. She pinched and flashed her eyes with malice as she delivered the insult, and a hearty, husky roar of laughter came from the corner of the room. That was mama, waddling into view with her fat arms folded over her fat stomach, shaking herself with mirth and contempt.

  Liddell closed the door softly and went back down the stairs.

  X

  Skeeter, under the first street lamp, counted the money in her hand and found $165. It stopped her brain. It took the reality out of the night and set the stars spinning. She had dreamed of a man like that, who handed out a whole fistful of money without counting, and here was the money in her grasp.

  Then she went on. It was queer to feel that stab, that upthrusting of joy, and know that it came from a dead man.

  Once she went to a funeral home in Southern California to do a little honor to a famous hobo’s death. They got a church funeral for him, some way. And the church was filled with flowers and organ music and she almost had fainted. Now the air of San Jacinto was sweetened with flowers at every window and music was never still in the air from one side of the town to the other. So that sense of death remained with her constantly. Nevertheless, her mind was grimly determined to see the end even if to give testimony later on against the numbers that were sure to combine against him.

  Besides, there was some sort of a ghost of a hope remaining in her that help would come in the final moment. Yet as she remembered how quiet he had been in the dark of his room, listening to her, she knew that she was wrong. He had submitted his will to hers, his judgment to hers, almost like a child. At this thought, the tears went suddenly down her face. She did not know they were there and let them dry in the warm air of the night.

  She had in mind a Mexican shop well out of the polite center of town. It could be opened by a little extra money if any store in the town could be unbarred at this time of the night. But she found it securely closed. Even this place obeyed the custom on the nights of the fiesta.

  This brought her to a pause. She stood gloomily on a corner, her head hanging, as an open automobile swung past filled with laughter and color. It turned the next corner toward the river and the laughter was shut out instantly, as though a velvet-edged door had closed between them. But other automobiles followed, and now a long, low, luxurious limousine with two men in front in uniform and a hint of ladies and gentry pointed out by street lamps as the car went by. They came, no doubt, from one of the houses on San Jacinto Hill.

  It was not much of a hill. Probably it did not rise a hundred feet above the river, but the swells and rich people who had their houses on it were fond of speaking of the superior stir of air, and the purity of the wind that blew through their precincts. For there were plenty of rich people in San Jacinto—Mexicans, most of them.

  When she thought of that, Skeeter moved straight into that superior section of the town. This was a region of iron grilles and barred lattices across wind
ows and over balconies so that modesty could take the air and see the world at the same time. The same devices offered very perfect ladders, and Skeeter, after walking a few swift blocks to pick the best prize, selected her mansion and was up a second-story balcony in no time at all. The balcony window was not even locked. In a moment she was in a boudoir that fairly loosened her knees and made her sit down to take stock. But she could not sit down.

  The señorita, on this evening, had not been able to suit her fancy at once. Across the bed lay a cloud of green, a shimmer of white, a mist of rose, and then a dashing design of all colors that she could think of. Skeeter made up her own mind while she was locking the door, with her head turned over her shoulder. She would take the green and use the scarf of the rose.

  The overalls came off with a few pulls and kicks. The rest of her clothes followed. Sometimes her face was a bit of a trial to her but the whole of herself was a great satisfaction, always. She stood for half of a priceless moment within the angle of a great triple mirror made of three expensive pier glasses, and with her arms folded behind her head she admired every slightness and every curve, for, as though gifted with new eyes, the mirror showed her more than she ever had seen before.

  But time counted. It might be desperately important.

  Her hands found their way to spiderwebbing of lingerie, and to stockings that could be felt, but hardly seen, a mere overlaying of pink mist on the gold brown that she had picked up at a thousand swimming holes. Then the dress. Then the makeup. But who could choose with ease among ten colors of lipstick?

  She made a choice, however, cursing the flight of time a little as she did so. And then she could darken those pale eyebrows with such effect that she hardly knew her own face. She worked on with frantic hands until the picture was such that she trembled a little at sight of it while she brushed out the tangle and left the curl of her hair. Over all, a black cloak. And she was ready.