by Max Brand
“Will you talk?” asked Sparrow through his teeth.
Still the youth did not alter his expression. It might be, perhaps, that he was not deaf, but was dumb. But Sparrow was not one to allow any method to remain untried. He bore down wickedly with his knuckles again, the full weight of his body upon them. When he looked up, the captive had set his jaw hard and the nostrils were flaring out in the agony of that trial, while his eyes glanced rapidly from one side of the room to the other, as though seeking for some way of escape. But there was no way. Suddenly the set jaw relaxed.
“I’ll talk,” said the victim in a voice surprisingly deep and soft for a youth of his years.
Sparrow leaped up from his chair with a sigh of relief. “That’s better.” There was plenty of iron in his nature, but, nevertheless, he was far from enjoying the part that he had had to play. Besides, it was like tormenting a lion that is bound only for the moment and is sure to be free again a little later.
“We’ll have your name first,” Sparrow repeated for the third time.
“Camden . . . Harry Camden,” said the stranger, and waited.
“How come you to be wanderin’through the woods like this?”
“That’s my business,” Camden answered.
“Maybe. But it’s mine, too, just now. Camden, I want to know.”
The blunt jaw of Camden clenched again. “I’ll give you some pretty good advice,” he said coldly. “Keep shut of things you don’t have to know.”
Sparrow, considering the matter quickly from every angle, decided that this advice was, indeed, thoroughly competent. Far better to infuriate any formidable enemy than to anger this slippery son of mischief.
“Camden,” said Sparrow, “what brought you out here in the woods, I’ll let go. But there’s one thing that I hang onto. You’ve done a good deal of thievin’ around this here camp.”
“I’ve brought you in enough venison and enough skins to more’n pay for what I took,” Camden responded calmly.
“Who asked you for venison and skins? Young feller, you stand in a pretty fair way to be sent up for robbery. You busted locks here, one night, to swipe chuck from the kitchen. D’you know how many years in prison the bustin’of locks means?”
The eyes of the other widened a trifle. “Prison?” he echoed.
“Prison!” Sparrow snapped out, following up his point with great energy when he saw that he was winning on this tack. “Bread and water . . . four stone walls around you every day. About fifteen years of livin’ in a hole, that’s all it would mean to you if I was to turn you over to the law, kid!”
Camden was turned to stone. All the color could not leave his face, as brown was the skin, but he changed to a sort of sickly yellow. Still he said nothing. He was terrified by that thought of imprisonment more than any fear of actual pain. That much was clear.
“But,” said Sparrow, “all you got to do is to promise to work for me for a year. You understand? You work for me for a year, and you do everything that I tell you. After that, you go free. But for a year you do what I tell you to do. I promise that you’ll have good clothes and plenty to eat. But for a year you’re my man. Understand me, Camden?”
Camden nodded slowly. “I guess that I understand,” he said huskily. “I turn into a sort of a hoss for a year. Is that it?”
“That’s it!”
“How’ll you know that I’ll stay with you?”
“You’ll gimme your word and your honor, and I’ll trust to that. Besides, if you try to break away, I’ll get you back and turn you over to the law.”
A faint smile, the first smile, appeared on the face of Camden. “Could you get me back?” he asked.
That touch of superiority angered Sparrow. “I caught you once, Camden. I’d catch you again.”
Camden shook his head sadly. “It was the girl I came to find out about,” he said. “The cat scared her. . . .”
He scuffed the big fur of the mountain lion with his bare foot, and Sparrow looked down with a sigh of wonder. This was a sort of desperate manliness on a large scale that he found it hard to comprehend.
“It was the girl that you got hooked with,” Sparrow said, angry because the cleverness of his devices was not appreciated. “But who sent the girl out there to be bait in the trap? Who used the girl to hook you, Camden? And what I done before, I’d manage some way to do again.” He snapped his bony fingers under the chin of Camden as he spoke.
“You sent the girl out!” breathed Camden. “You sent Nan Pearson?”
“I sent Nan Pearson.”
“You hired her?”
“Anyway, I got her to go out. I fixed the trap for you, old son, and you up and walked into it.”
A little pause fell between them. During that pause, before the fury in the eyes of the captive and the agony in his face, Sparrow scowled down at the floor.
“Well, kid,” he said hurriedly, “all I want is your promise. Look here . . . I got a chance to do big things for the both of us. I got a chance to make a fortune for you, if you do things the way that I want you to do ’em! I got a way for you to make money . . . big money, Camden!”
Camden shrugged his shoulders. “What do I need of money?” he said. Then he added slowly, thoughtfully: “She helped you to catch me?”
“Did you think you’d get her interested?” Sparrow demanded scornfully. “And you without a bean in the world?”
“She likes the money, then?” asked Camden, and he turned his big, inscrutable amber eyes upon the other.
“There never was a woman that didn’t,” responded Sparrow. “A little coin’ll sweeten up pretty near any man, as far as the women goes. Now, kid, you hear me talk. One year . . . that’s all I want. After that, you won’t have to work no more. You can live in the woods and keep a wife in town, if you want.” He laughed heartily. “You’ll have enough coin to do whatever you like. You hear me, kid?”
“How much money is that? How much money . . . would . . . well, buy a house and keep it runnin’?” Camden asked heavily.
“And a wife inside the house?” snapped out Sparrow, grinning broadly.
Camden turned a dark, dark red.
“Look here! Fifty thousand I’ll make for you. Fifty thousand . . . maybe a hundred thousand . . . in a year. In a year! D’you hear me, kid? D’you understand?”
The “kid” regarded Sparrow with unutterable scorn and contempt, with a deeply buried hatred, and yet he was forced to nod.
“Then we’ll shake hands on this,” said Sparrow. “You make the bargain. You gimme your word of honor?”
“My word of honor,” muttered the other.
Sparrow touched the ropes with the edge of his knife. Camden leaped to his feet, free. He made one threatening step toward Sparrow, and the latter, feeling that the man of the woods had doubled in size with the first taste of freedom, stood his ground with fear and trembling—yet he remained without flight, simply because he knew that flight was impossible from the face of this active hunter. Sparrow had already tried it and knew.
AGAINST KENNY AND MUNROE
When a million dollars is put at the command of a lucky man, what does he do with it? He usually sits down and folds his hands and wonders where he will begin with the splurge. So it was with Sparrow. He felt that he had a great treasure given into his keeping for exploitation, and he wanted to use it to the best advantage. But how should he manage that affair?
First of all, was he so absolutely sure that Camden would be formidable in the ring? Might it not be that, dreadful as he was in action in the wilderness, he would be a very tame lion when he stepped into the ring with a tried veteran like Bert Kenny, durable and hard hitting, or a clever fencer with hands like Vince Munroe’s?
A perspiration of anxiety started out on the face of Sparrow when he thought of this matter. He hastened to test the thing at once. He brought both of the sparring partners to the ring. It was the dew time of the morning still. The smoke was rising thickly from the chimney above the shack of Cycl
one Ed Morgan, and Cyclone himself had not yet put in an appearance. There were only the four of them, and the frightened eyes of the cook in the distance. He made the audience for the fray.
“You’ve hung around in the trees and watched the boys box?” asked Sparrow.
Camden nodded.
“After you swiped the punching bag, you practiced on it, the way you seen the boys work on the bag?”
Camden assented again.
“Well,” said the trainer, “if you’ve done that enough, you know something about glove work. You go into the ring, there, and take care of yourself.”
He tossed a pair of gloves to the man from the woods. Then he went to Bert Kenny, the slugger.
“Look here, Bert,” he said, “this bird from the forest thinks that he can knock you cold. You want a chance to put him away. Well, kid, here you are. Knock him dead, Bert!”
Bert smiled cruelly, contentedly. This was a game entirely to his liking.
Camden had been furnished with trunks and with rubber-soled shoes that clung to the rough, padded canvas on the floor of the ring. Those shoes slowed up immensely feet that were accustomed to working without any covering—big feet, spread out by going bare over all sorts of country, and only covered in winter, or for rocky country, with a rudely made sort of moccasin. He tried a few steps about the ring and shook his head.
“Lemme take off the shoes,” he suggested to the manager, but Sparrow merely grinned.
“And have somebody put his heel on your toes?” he said.
So Camden, as Bert Kenny slipped through the ropes, put up his hands as he had seen the others do many and many a time as he lurked on the edge of the camp and watched. It was a fascinating game to watch. It was one with which he himself was not entirely out of touch. The giving and taking and dodging of blows are something that all who live wildly must soon understand.
Bert Kenny took his distance and began to measure his enemy with his eye.
“Break when I tell you to break,” instructed Sparrow, slipping into the ring as referee. “And no hitting when you break. Mind that, Camden. No hitting when you break!”
This was something that had to be explained, and Camden shook his head over it. Then he stood up to Kenny. The latter feinted with his left. The guard of the youth flew out to meet that feint, and Bert grinned as he stuffed the glove into the face of the wild man. He glanced aside at Sparrow, whose forehead was black with a frown of disappointment, and at Vince Monroe, as though to reassure them that this was the easiest work he had undertaken in a long time.
Camden snorted the scent of the glove from his nostrils and glided away. Kenny followed, looking for an opportunity to close, but still willing to try out his foe a few passes before he struck in earnest. He was sensing his own superiority comfortably. He was working his shoulders, smoothly back and forth, and taking shrewd aim at the youngster.
He feinted again with the left, but, instead of striking with the same hand, he followed with a lightning long drive of the right for the jaw. The feint was a beautiful piece of work; the drive was a joy to behold, and it landed fairly on the side of Camden’s jaw with a shock that sent a delicious half-numb tingle all the way to the shoulder of the pugilist. It was his pride that he could take it; it was also his pride that he could give it, and certainly he had given it now. Kenny stepped back hastily to give the man room to fall.
Camden did not fall. He merely passed the tip of his glove, with a curious frown, along the side of his jaw, and then squinted quizzically at his antagonist. There was a joyous yell from Sparrow.
“He took it, Bert! He took it! He soaked up your best!”
“The devil!” said Bert Kenny. “That wasn’t nothin’. Wait till I’m through with him. I’ll turn you inside out, kid!”
And, forgetting caution, he rushed blindly. He struck the thinnest air. Camden had slipped from his path as the cat slips from beneath the falling shadow. Bert Kenny, recovering himself sharply, whirled and lashed out heavily—a full right-handed swing.
Camden struck inside that swing, a slightly curving left-hand punch, jerking the glove down a trifle at the instant of his glove’s impact against the jaw. Against his elbow swayed the swing of Bert Kenny, adding impetus to his own punch.
It was a small thing, that blow. It looked no more than the most simple sort of a jab, but the effect was most remarkable. Bert Kenny’s head jerked back as though he had run at full speed into a clothesline. His feet whipped up from the floor, and he fell flat on his back. Neither did he rise, but he lay there with eyes closed and a loose expression upon his face, a faintly thoughtful frown upon his forehead. They picked him up and carried him out of the ring. They doused him with cold spring water. Then he sighed and opened his eyes wearily.
“What happened?” asked Bert.
“You were soaked by the next champion middleweight of the world,” said Sparrow through teeth that fairly chattered with the morning chill and with excitement. “You was soaked by the fastest steppin’, hardest-hittin’ boy I ever seen in that class, and I’ve seen ’em all . . . I’ve seen ’em all. If I can only teach him how to block! If I can only teach him how to block!”
He turned to Vince Munroe. “Hop in there, Vince. Stay away from him. Box, box, box! Don’t let him put a hand on you!”
So Vince Munroe obediently hopped into the ring. He was the exact opposite of Bert Kenny. In their prime, a few years before, each had been formidable and rising middleweights. But each had gone wrong in a different way. Bert Kenny, learning how to hit a knockout punch, had died on his feet and become too slow to confront a first-rate performer, although he retained all of his original ruggedness. Vince Munroe, originally a fairly hard puncher, had forgotten how to punch but had learned to box with a mystic grace and effectiveness. He could out-point almost anyone; he could outfight hardly a child.
Now he stepped confidently up to Camden. A man whom Bert Kenny could feint out and hit at will would be child’s play to him. He could play tag with this fellow all the day long, and call it a game in the end.
He began well. He popped left and right into the face of the wild man and danced away from any return, chuckling. He dipped in again, dexterous as a swallow, and pegged right and left into the body of Camden.
“How is he?” Sparrow called anxiously.
“India rubber!” answered Vince.
“Look out!” called Sparrow. “Here he comes!”
Camden, in fact, had held back from the enemy for a time, striving vainly to block these accurate whiplash blows, not heavy enough to hurt, but delivered with such inescapable speed. Now, angered, he leaped suddenly at Vince Munroe.
Never did Vince box so beautifully as in this crisis. He blocked a driving left and a whipping right, but the sheer force of the punches swept him before the onslaught. He caught a hard punch on the point of his elbow. He picked another out of the air with his gloved hand; he held out a glove to stop another, but the punch crashed home. In spite of his glove, there was force enough to that blow, landing on the side of his head, to knock him sprawling. He staggered to his feet and faced another furious rush, but not a blind rush. Every movement of Camden was planned with the most deliberate care. He struck as a boxer strikes at a punching bag—a shower of blows, but every blow had in it the force of a knockout. The first half dozen were blocked by Vince Munroe, fighting desperately to uphold his boxer’s reputation. But the seventh punch was a feint learned from Vince himself, and the eighth slid like a snake through the small opening that the feint had made in the guard of Munroe.
It did not strike him on the jaw. It landed not even on a vulnerable point of the body. But it crashed fairly against the chest of the fighter, lifted him, and flung him against the ropes. The ropes, swinging back, tossed him face down on the canvas, and there he writhed and groaned and gasped for breath, while Sparrow danced around and around the ring in an hysteria of joy.
A LITTLE SCARE
There was no joy of victory in the face of Camden, howeve
r, for, as he looked around, he saw Nan Pearson, standing between Cyclone Ed Morgan and Cyclone’s wife, with a look of wonder and of horror on her face. A moment later she had fled back to the house as fast as she could run, drawing Jenny beside her.
Camden laid on Sparrow’s shoulder a hand that even through the glove was like the touch of iron.
“Why did she run away?” he asked.
“The look of you, man,” answered Sparrow. “It would have scared ten men and a boy to see the look of you . . . let alone a snip of a girl like poor Nan.”
As Sparrow spoke, Cyclone Ed Morgan came up and surveyed the stranger from head to foot.
“You’re him,” he said savagely, “that soaked me when I wasn’t lookin’?”
“You’re him,” Camden said with equal venom, “that threw a stone at me?”
Sparrow rushed between them. “You’ll get your chance at each other, boys,” he said. “But wait a while.”
Then, while he was busy talking with Cyclone Ed and with Bert and Vince, the man of the woods found his chance to leave them and retreat through the trees to the side of Ed Morgan’s shack. Perhaps no lesson against eavesdropping had ever been read into his early life by another. At any rate, quite shamelessly, quite noiselessly, he slipped up to the side of the house, and there he found a convenient crevice in the loosely constructed wall through which he could both see and hear all that passed inside the house. There was enough to make Camden turn crimson with shame and then white with anger.
For pretty Nan Pearson sat in a corner of the room with Jenny Morgan beside her, alternately laughing and crying.
“Are you still afraid of him?” asked Jenny.
“Afraid? Oh, Jen, I’ve been thinking him such a big, terrible man . . . and he’s only a boy. He’s only a boy! And how silly he looked when he saw us.”