by Max Brand
“How did you know that?”
“No real professional would’ve floated all of that money onto the market as quick as you done, Pete.”
“Wouldn’t they?”
“Never in the world. However, what’s fifteen or sixteen thousand dollars to me? I’m too rich to value it... wouldn’t value it against the services of a man like you, if you was inclined to work for me, Peter.”
“I’m not inclined, though.”
“Think it over, Peter. Think it over. There’s plenty of time. I’ll come back tomorrow. Or, if you make up your mind tonight, just touch a match to one of the dead bushes on the hill behind your barn. Y’understand? I’ll be watching and I’ll send right down for you. But in the meantime, I’ve got the cold dope on you. I can prove that you got that money from me... the money that you’ve been spending on this here ranch. Well, this looks pretty good to me, this ranch work. Except that I’ve got an idea that nothing good comes out of crookedness... and it won’t with you, either. Look at me. I’ve always been a crook. I’m never happy except when I’m drunk. Which is most of the time, I suppose. But I tell you this here so’s you can think it over when you get a chance. You hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“Come up to work for me. Leave this here ranch, where you’ve sure fixed everything so’s to keep your old man happy the rest of his life, and I’ll fix you up with a salary fat enough to make you contented. Besides, I can teach you ways of making money faster than you ever thought about before. Come with me, kid, and your happy days are just beginning... that’s all. But if you won’t come with me, I’ll put you in the penitentiary as sure as you’re a foot high!”
“Unless I shoot you down, Mike.”
“You’re cold and you’re hard. But you ain’t a murderer. No, I’m safe with you... though scared. Safe, though damned afraid of you, big boy.”
“No other alternative for me, Mike?”
“Why, yes. I’ll play fair with you. I wouldn’t pin a good shifty man like you against the wall. You collect sixteen thousand dollars and pay it to me inside of a week or a month, and I won’t charge you no interest. But where would you get that much cash... unless you stole it again?”
“There are other ways,” Peter said, nodding.
“Well,” said the fat man, “I don’t know what the other ways might be, outside of stealing or inheriting it, or borrowing. So long, Pete. I’m due in another place. Think it over. I look to see that fire start tonight.” And Mike Jarvin walked out of the little shop.
Peter watched him go, whistling softly and thoughtfully to himself until a shadow slipped across the front doorway of the shop, and he looked up into the darkened face of his cousin, Charlie.
“Your fat friend... whoever he may be... is a fool, after all,” Charlie announced with a sneer. “He might have known that the easiest way of all is to marry money. Am I right, Peter?”
Peter drummed light fingertips upon his chin. “Perhaps you’re right, Charlie,” he said. “Perhaps you’re right. Though I hate to poach on your preserves.”
CHAPTER XVI
THE HAMMER THAT Peter Hale had raised for the next stroke descended softly and then dropped into the muffling sawdust that covered the floor of the smithy.
“A little eavesdropping for honest Charlie,” he said.
“A little eavesdropping,” admitted Charlie frankly. “And I only thank heaven that I had a chance to hear the truth about you, Peter. I came here pretty much determined to talk things out with you like a friend, but now I see that I can fight it out with a crook, and that’s what I intend doing.”
“Fighting?” Peter smiled.
“Not with fists,” Charlie said, flushing. “I wouldn’t take any advantage of you. But we’ve heard how you can shoot. How you fanned the feathers out of the crow and then dropped it on the wing. And if you can really shoot with a Colt like that, you’ve got it all over me.”
Peter raised himself and stood awkwardly on his steel-braced legs. When he was sitting down, one could easily forget that there was anything wrong with him. But when he stood up in this fashion, he appeared the mere wreck of a man.
“Shooting, Charlie?” he asked. “Do you mean that?”
“Why, curse you!” broke out Charlie. “Of course I mean it. Because I won’t live without her. You don’t want her, except for her money. She’s a fool, from your way of looking at things, and you’d never think of marrying her, except that Mike Jarvin has your back against the wall. Oh, what a lot of fools we’ve all been not to connect the Jarvin robbery with the time when you started spending your money like water. He was your rich friends in the East.”
“You’re right,” admitted Peter. “Everything that you say is true. But I give you this warning, Charlie. I don’t want trouble with you. You’re a fine fellow. A lot cleaner, and a darned sight more honest than I am. I don’t want to spoil your life for you, but at the same time I have to tell you that I can’t let you interfere in this. I’ve put my father through eleven years of purgatory. I’ve taken it into my mind to pay him back with a little comfort and happiness. Your father stacked up money and land for you. Well, there it is for you to take. My father invested money and pain in the attempt to make a fine man of me. And I know that he failed, but I want to keep him from seeing that he failed. To gain that point, I’d kill ten men like you, Charlie. I warn you now. You’ll have no chance against me. I have no nerves. My hand is as steady now as the hour hand of a clock. And I shoot fast and straight. I’ve always loved guns. Charlie, if you force this thing through, you’re a dead man. If you’ll get out of it and let me be, why, we’ll fight things out in a different manner. The girl has a right to change her mind about you, if she pleases, hasn’t she?”
“She has, I suppose,” Charlie said gloomily. “If I thought that she’d be happy with you, I wouldn’t step in. But you ain’t her kind. You’re too deep for her. You’re too mean and cool for her. You’ve knocked her off balance, being so strange to her. But if you step out of the picture, she’ll forget you and remember me again. You hear me talk?”
Peter sighed, and then a faintly cruel smile touched his lips. “I’ve stated my viewpoint from the beginning to the end,” he said. “Now you may do as you please. You have a gun at your hip, I think?”
“I have. Are you ready?”
“Oh, I’m ready. Though I hate this business, Charlie.”
“Curse you and your snaky ways! I’m gonna do a good thing for the world when I rid it of you. Here’s at you, Pete.” He reached for his gun, a quick and snapping movement, which any good cowpuncher on the range must have approved of highly. It was a vital fifth of a second slower than Peter’s answering gesture. That light-triggered gun exploded, and the bullet, flying straight for the heart of Charlie, encountered on its way the Colt that Charlie Hale was jerking up to fire.
The heavy chunk of lead, landing solidly on the weapon, tore it from the finger tips of Charlie and flung it against his face. So he staggered. The revolver landed heavily on the floor, and Charlie dropped upon one knee, his handsome face bathed in crimson, for the front sight had sliced through the skin to the bone. He was only down for an instant. There was plenty of the fighting blood of the Hales in him. He came to his feet like a leaping tiger and drove straight in at Peter.
The face of Peter turned cold with a cruel satisfaction as he balanced his gun for the finishing shot. He covered the heart; he covered the head. Then, suddenly changing his mind, he struck with the barrel of the gun and dropped Charlie, senseless, at his feet.
He leaned and scooped out a handful of water from the tempering tub and dashed it into the face of his cousin. Charlie, gasping and reeling, came unsteadily to his feet again.
“How does it come that I’m still living?” Charlie gasped.
“Because it occurred to me,” Peter said in his deep, calm voice, “that this girl and her affair is the business of life to you, Charlie. While to me, she’s only a game... only a game. And why should you
be crushed for the sake of another... touchdown?”
“Touchdown?” said Charlie. “I don’t know what you mean.” Peter did not answer. He had picked up the fallen sledge and he was balancing it deftly in his hand.
The anxiety with which Mike Jarvin awaited the result of the invitation that he had extended to Peter Hale was demonstrated that evening as he walked out in front of the shack in which he lived at the mine. Behind him and beside him were ever the two Buttrick boys, one of them limping, and both of them more saturnine and ferocious than ever, since their disgraceful defeat at the hands of a single robber. However, Mike Jarvin paid no heed to them. His attention was fixed on the black heart of the night in the valley below. It was more than half a day’s ride to follow the winding trail that wove among the mountains. But it was a scant span of miles, to go as the bird flies or the eye looks. And Mike Jarvin studied that strip of dark shadow until the two Buttrick boys stared, also.
Presently, as a yellow eye of fire formed suddenly in the hollow beneath them, they heard big Mike Jarvin murmur: “By the eternal, the young fool is going to come to me... and throw the rest of his life away.”
“Who is coming?” asked snarling Lefty Buttrick.
“My lucky day,” Mr. Jarvin said, and broke into a joyous laughter.
CHAPTER XVIII
WHEN BIG MIKE Jarvin saw the answering sign from the deep and distant darkness, he rubbed his fat hands together for a moment and laughed to himself. Then he went back to the shack and kicked at a door. There was no answer.
“Soapy!” he roared.
Still there was no response. So he entered the room and lighted a lantern that hung on the wall. By that light he saw a great mound of a man lying on the bunk beneath the window, as though fallen into a trance, or dead with liquor.
He gripped the sleeper by the shoulder. “Soapy!”
Even the thunder of that rough voice could not wake the other.
“Soapy! Gin!” he shouted again.
Suddenly the other groaned, wakened, and sat bolt upright on the edge of the bunk, gripping the sides of it with his hands, and swaying a little with utter exhaustion and the torpor of long sleep.
“Gimme,” he said, stretching out a hand.
How he had got his name it would have been hard to guess, and certainly it could hardly have been from the too-frequent use of soap. Or perhaps it was because his skin was the color of cheap yellow-brown laundry soap. He had a face almost perfectly rounded, above a broad, flat, outthrust chin. Slice the lower part off a globe and you would have a fairly accurate idea of the formation of the head of Soapy. The jaw seemed the widest portion. Everything above it pinched gradually in, and the vast ears thrust out at the angle where the skull began to diminish most rapidly.
Seen from the side view, the same curve was apparent. At the base, that head was still much larger than any other portion of it. The nose was a negligible feature, hardly prominent enough to interrupt the sweep of the contour, except when some emotion made the big, depressed nostrils flare out. The eyes were sunken inside a huge rim of bone, and above the eyes the forehead rounded swiftly back, unconcerned in making space for that region where the brain is usually lodged.
It was a marvelous defensive arrangement. A pugilist would have envied that magnificently built sconce. Where could a blow strike and find lodgment? Only on the jaw itself, and that jaw was so heavily fortified that to strike Soapy there was almost like striking him on the top of his dense skull. To set off these attractive features, there was a dense, close-curling cap of black hair fitting close to his head. It looked like a ridiculously diminutive wig, set on a brown, bald man’s head.
The rest of Soapy was made after this same unusual pattern. The arm that he stretched forth in the hope of the expected gin was as bulky as a man’s thigh. The hand, which was big enough to have served for two, was furnished with long, thick fingers, square clipped at the ends.
He was not tall; he was even some inches under six feet. But the number twelve shoe into which his foot had been crowded had not furnished enough room, and therefore it had been cut away at the toes, and the foot bulged through.
“No gin, you blockhead,” Mike Jarvin declared, eying the monster with quiet appreciation. “You’ve slept twenty-two hours, Soapy. Ain’t it time for you to wake up?”
“The devil,” said Soapy. “No gin?” He fell back sidewise upon the bunk, his legs still trailing over the side of it, his body twisted out of shape, but his eyes instantly closed in slumber.
Jarvin raised his foot and ground the heel cruelIy into the ribs of the other. “Soapy! It’s a horse!”
The eyes of Soapy opened again, and he sat up once more, wearily groaning. “Well?” he said.
“A horse, Soapy.”
“Ah-h-h?” growled the mulatto. “Is that it? D’you aim to get a horse that can pack me around?”
“I aim at that, you scoundrel.”
Soapy stood up, seized a basin of water, and poured it over his head. A careless wipe with a towel removed some of the water, and he now stood up more erect, regardless of the numerous trickles that dripped down his back and chest.
“Lemme know where,” he said, “and gimme the coin to get it.” He added savagely: “A hoss to pack me!”
“It’ll do that,” said Mike Jarvin. “But ain’t you really slept out?”
“I went three days without dosing an eye,” said Soapy. “How could I be slept out now? Where do I get the horse?”
Jarvin retreated toward the door. “There’s a horse that can carry you,” he said, “but you ain’t the friend that I want it for.”
“I ain’t?” Soapy said, and caught up a heavy chair as lightly as though it had been a straw.
Jarvin dodged into the doorway, but Soapy dropped the chair again with a sigh. “All right,” he said. “I’ll ride that horse back, though. Where is he to be got?”
“He’s a chestnut by name of Larribee, and Wisner has him. You can ride across to the Wisner place inside of two hours.”
“Well?” said Soapy. “It’s a mean ride. What do I get out of it?”
“Here’s two thousand, Soapy. You bring back the horse and you can keep the change.” He laid a sheaf of bills on the table and stepped quickly back into the night. Then he called: “Soapy!”
“Umph?” grunted the other.
“Is that enough to be worth running away with?”
“About five hundred short,” said Soapy.
He came out rubbing the weariness from his eyes. There was a loosely arranged circle of shacks, one very much like the other. The miners lived in the inner ones, toward the mouth of the mine. Jarvin’s was hardly distinguishable from the rest, but it stood in the most favorable position on the edge of the valley. It was situated in this look-out position, so said the talk of the miners, so that Jarvin could see the devil on the way to catch him. They said this with a certain amount of good humor, for the enormities of Jarvin were too gross and terrible to admit of real anger. One had either to disbelieve or smile. And except for the occasions when they rose, singly or in groups, and tried to murder him, the miners preferred to smile.
Beyond the shacks, again, there were the stables — the mules and the burros for the mine work were kept here at a minimum of expense by Mike Jarvin. Here, also, were the horses. It was one of the mules that Soapy took. He had tried his 250 pounds with unlucky results upon the back of more than one horse, but this mouse-colored mule with the stout legs and the shortcoupled back could carry him along at a back-breaking trot for hours on end.
So Soapy rode away through the night. He was so intent that he did not turn back to resent the half-heard remark that drifted after him from a group of the idling miners:
“There goes Jarvin’s pet gorilla.”
Soapy heard. He even marked down the voice in his memory with all the care that he could manage. But for the time being he could not turn aside for any smaller pleasures such as thrashing the impertinent. He was bent on seeing a horse actuall
y capable of carrying his own weight, even though the horse was destined to the use of another man.
He passed down a valley, where all that he had to guide him through the thick blackness was the glimmer of a little stream that ran down among the rocks. That was enough for the mule and Soapy. They descended into the plain beyond, and in far less than the two hours his hand was knocking at the door of Mr. Wisner’s house.
When Wisner came out to answer the inquiry, Soapy said: “I hear that you got a five-hundred-dollar horse down here?”
“I got a five-thousand-dollar horse,” said the rancher. “What about it?”
“I might buy it,” said Soapy.
“You might?” asked the other, eying the face and the form of the grotesque.
“Sure,” Soapy said. “I got a kid that’s fond of pretty horses. Lemme have a look at it, will you?”
Mr. Wisner led the way to a little pasture, and in answer to his whistle a shadowy monster heaved against the stars. Now it stood on the inner side of the fence, reaching its curious head over the bars.
“There’s close to eighteen hands of that horse,” said Wisner. “Wait till I get this lantern lighted.”
In the flare of the light, Larribee tossed his head, but he did not retreat.
“He’s a pet, eh?” Soapy said.
“He’s a pet. Five years old. Sound as iron. Now you’ve seen him. What about it?”
“He’s too big for the mountains,” said Soapy, shaking his head.
“He’s been running in the mountains every day,” answered the rancher. “He’s like a big cat in them. Better than a mule for sure feet. And that’s why five thousand ain’t too much.”
“I got a thousand dollars in cash right here in my hand for you,” said Soapy. “What do you say? Take it or leave it?”