Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  That food worked like magic upon the mulatto. No matter how many bullets had pierced his body, there was no wound in his stomach, and in a week he was out of all danger. In a month those dreadful furrows in his flesh had closed, leaving only purple scars to mark them. He was quickly back on his feet and robed in his full strength. The doctor stopped marveling. He declared that Soapy was simply a step back toward the primeval man.

  But after his second encounter with the Buttricks, and his second long stay in bed, Soapy had learned discretion. He hated them both with an unabated rage. But still he knew that it would not do to presume upon his emotions. It would be infinitely safer to treat them with a distant toleration. They seemed to him like a two-faced god of war, watching in both directions at once, and so guarded from attack from the front or from the rear.

  Either of them, alone, he would not have feared. He felt that he was just as quick in his use of a gun as either of them. He felt that he was just as straight in his shooting. If the fight ever came to closer quarters than bullets, he would willingly have taken a dozen men like the Buttricks and beaten their heads together, in perfect serenity as to the outcome of the battle. For the belief of Soapy in himself was an almost godlike confidence.

  However, with all the faith that he had in himself, he regarded the Buttricks with a superstitious awe. They were not like the other men who he had encountered. He felt that they were invincible. It was a part of their pride that they rarely or never fought alone. They moved together; they thought together; they worked together. Whenever one scanned the horizon that lay in front, the other was sure to have his head turned in order to observe any dangers that might drift into ken from the rear.

  Yet here was a man who had dared to walk up to the door of the Buttrick shack, from which, like threatening deities, they had so often rushed forth and worked havoc in the camp among the enemies of big Jarvin. Here was a man who dared to walk up to that door and challenge them to step out and face him — only his lone, crippled self. Yet they did not come.

  Said Soapy: “Killing with guns ain’t good enough for him. That’s the idea of the Buttricks.”

  The cook regarded him askance. Then he said: “Now look here, Soapy, might it be that the two somehow is afraid of that gent?”

  Soapy turned his round head. It wheeled upon his thick neck like the head of a bird, turning with a strange absence of effort, until he seemed to be looking almost squarely behind him.

  “Tell me this, will you? Was they afraid of me?” The cook was silent, but the remorseless Soapy continued: “And ain’t I as good as any other one man in the world?” Again the cook was silent. “Is there anybody,” Soapy asked with the slow earnestness of one who must be clearly understood, “that has ever stood up to me for one minute?”

  “No,” said the cook. “Not with the hands, anyway. I remember what happened to the big polack that come up here special to bust you into bits.”

  At this, Soapy allowed himself to smile. The grimace sliced his face veritably in two and exposed a double row of huge, pointed fangs. “Hands is one thing,” said Soapy, “but did you ever know of a gent, either, that ever stood up to me with rifle or revolver or knife, or any other weapon that you can name down to a blacksmith hammer?”

  The cook frowned reflectively. “‘Specially with the blacksmith hammer,” he said in thought. “No, Soapy, I dunno that anybody has ever had better than an even break with you, except the Buttricks.”

  “No matter how they come, one, two, three, or four,” said the mulatto, “there was never enough gents together in one group to lick me. I was too much for anyone man. I was too much for any two. And why wouldn’t the boss give me the job as his guard, I ask?”

  “Because that you snored too loud, maybe?”

  “No, but it was only because that he hates a Negro. And I’m a Negro, cook. Know that?”

  “Are you?” replied the cook in polite surprise.

  “Yes, by heaven,” Soapy said with great vehemence. “I’m a Negro, and I’m proud of it. I’m a Negro and I want the whole world to know that I am, in spite of this here white face of mine.” And he pointed a thick forefinger at his yellow hide.

  The cook did not smile. He would not have smiled at a ghost, or at a tiger, within the reach of whose paw he stood. He merely nodded with the utmost gravity.

  “Well, Soapy,” he said, “I would never have guessed it.”

  Only when Soapy had looked away to have another glance at the door of the shack of the Buttricks and make sure that it had not opened did the cook permit himself to wink broadly at a neighbor.

  The wink was not returned by so much as a knowing glance, because that neighbor stood within the edge of the range of the mulatto’s vision, and it would have been rash to take even the slightest chance, because the temper of Soapy was just a trifle more uncertain than nitroglycerin in cold weather in a closely stoppered bottle.

  “No,” said Soapy, turning back to the cook again, “the fact is the boss hates all Negroes. Why? Because why, I ask you? Because they’re too good for him, that’s why! Yes, sir, I tell you that’s the reason. Too good for him. Why, when I think how he hates me, for instance, I wonder that you don’t see me choke him one of these days.”

  “What’s made you so sure that he hates you?”

  “I can tell by the way he treats me. What does he want me here for? To do dirty work. He pays me big. Sure he pays me big. I take his money, and then he’s got the fun of seeing me do this dirty work, and, while I do it, he says to himself... ‘Ha, now I’m making a Negro suffer.’”

  “What sort of dirty work do you mean?” asked the cook.

  “If he wants something and he wants it cheap, who does he send out to get it? I buy it if I can, but, if I can’t buy it, I got to steal it. Because I don’t dare to come back and face him without it. His tongue would sure start working on oiled hinges if I was to do a thing like that.”

  “Look here, Soapy, why don’t you up and leave him, then?”

  “Because I’m waiting for my chance at him, and that’s the only thing under the sky that keeps me here, honey, and you can lay to that.”

  “All right, Soapy, I can understand you feeling that way, only, what is there that keeps you from doing what you want with him? You’re pretty near to him, most of the time.”

  The mulatto cast an ugly glance over his shoulder. “You tell me, then, why don’t some of the others take a chance at him... and they’s plenty of others right here in the same camp that would sure like to take a fall out of him so’s he would never get up again, I guess?”

  “Sure,” agreed the cook instantly. “I’m one, curse his heart!”

  “And what keeps you back? What’s been keeping you back all of these here months?”

  “The Buttricks,” admitted the cook.

  “And me,” Soapy said, rubbing his great hands together. “But now it looks as though the old man had gone crazy, and he’s trying to get rid of the Buttricks. For why? For to be chopped up by the rest of us? Would you tell me that?”

  The cook shook his head. “We’re all wondering,” he said. “But it don’t look likely, does it, Soapy?”

  “Likely?” said Soapy. “Son, the Buttricks’ll come out and you’ll see ’em eat that fool.”

  “Will you?” queried the cook. “Then you tell me how you’re gonna explain the thing that we’re seeing now, if you can.”

  For the door of the Buttrick house had opened, and yonder stood the terrible Lefty, but not girt for battle. Instead of that, his bag of dunnage was slung heavily over his shoulder, and under his other arm he carried a bristling canvas bag that contained Lefty’s gun. He stepped out onto the verandah.

  “Well?” said the cook.

  “It’s a fake,” gasped the mulatto. “Lefty comes out this way so’s to draw the other sucker out of his house, and then Dan will whirl in and eat him... no, by heaven.”

  For directly behind Lefty appeared the form of the second brother, Dan, equipped much like
Lefty with a burden of luggage.

  CHAPTER XXI

  THERE WAS A moan from the mulatto, a moan of pain, as twin gods fell from their pedestal in his mind and crashed into nether limbo.

  “All the time,” Soapy asked, straightening upon his feet, “was the pair of them yaller hounds only lucky in getting the drop on me?”

  He received no answer, for the very good reason that among all those fairly hardy onlookers he was the only one really capable of speech at the moment.

  They watched the Buttricks trail their luggage toward the stables, and then they watched the Buttricks appear again, riding their best saddle horses, and leading their spares. It was noted with an increasing wonder that the great Buttricks, the men of blood, did not take the straight way, which led past the face of the house of the boss. Instead, they chose to circle around the shacks, close to the mouth of the mine, and, in this fashion, they made their exit from the camp and started down into the valley.

  “What does it mean?” asked the mulatto, sighing. “Well, ain’t we all been kind of blind and stupid? I tell you, boys, that this here is nothin’ more or less than hypnotism. That cripple, he got the two Buttricks hypnotized. Can anybody else give a better way of explaining the things that we just been seeing?”

  No one could. That was apparent. They looked back from one to the other and shook their heads.

  “Wait a minute,” said the cook in a whisper. “Here he comes again. And now you take another look at him, he’s pretty big. He looks kind of mean, even for a cripple.”

  Soapy shook his head. Vigor of no mere physical dimension was capable of explaining the miracle that he had just seen. He needed more than that.

  They saw Jarvin and his companion move slowly across the clearing and toward the stables behind the shack. In the distance they saw the monster stallion led forth. The cripple raised himself to the saddle with a singular dexterity.

  The cook exclaimed: “What awful arms he must have! What awful arms, mates. Don’t he sling himself around just as though he was stuffed out with feathers instead of flesh?”

  There was no doubt that was the case. They saw him fix his steel-braced feet in the stirrups, and then they watched him guide the stallion back and forth in front of the stables. There was a raking big fence, crowned with a heavy beam nearby, and suddenly the cripple put his mount at that fence. The big horse cleared it flying, and landed with a wonderful rolling stride in the inside of the corral. In the next moment he had been turned and had jumped out again.

  “Look,” said the cook. “Suppose that hoss had fallen. No help for that cripple. He couldn’t’ve moved himself. He would’ve been done. And that’s what I call nerve, old sons.”

  “Cook,” broke in Soapy, “you don’t know nothing. You think that that horse could fail, even if it wanted to? No, sir, it couldn’t, and the reason why is what I’m gonna tell you plain and true, old-timer. There was something in the head of that gent that kept the hoss from falling. There was the power of something in his head.”

  “What power?” asked someone.

  “What power took the nerve away from the Buttricks?” Soapy asked with a harsh violence. “Ask me, will you, what power it was that sent the Buttricks away like beaten dogs. Well, it was the same thing, just.”

  “Spooks?” said the cook.

  “You talk, son,” Soapy said darkly. “I’ve said enough. I’m ready to listen to the rest of you giving good explanations of the things that we been seeing with our own eyes.”

  There was such a world of conviction in the voice and in the manner of Soapy that the others banished their smiles at once and grew sober. There were few of them of sufficient education to be above the grade of low superstitions, and, indeed, there had been something miraculous in the thing that they had seen, for they knew the Buttricks, and they had too often seen those hardy men in action in their midst. Many and many a one of them, indeed, had stood in front of the yawning revolvers held by the steady hands of the Buttrick brothers. That was an experience to be remembered with chills through all of a long life. And here was the pair of them, ushered forth like frightened children. Mere words could hardly explain such a thing as this.

  After a time they could see the cripple dismount and go back with Jarvin toward the shack of the boss.

  “That’s it,” whispered Soapy. “That’s it, sons. There he goes along with old Jarvin. Didn’t I tell you that Jarvin was playing for something higher and bigger than ordinary? Didn’t I tell you that he was getting ready to pluck something that was bigger than anything that he had ever taken before? And there’s the proof of it. He gets afraid of the Buttricks. He brings in this gent to fire them. Then he uses that big hoss to bribe the gent. Why, you ask me?”

  No one had asked, but Soapy had a way of conducting a dialogue in this fashion, filling in with his own mouth the little interstices in his talk.

  “Why, you ask me?” went on Soapy, while the others watched him askance as they listened. “It’s because he knows that there’s something in this here world that’s a lot stronger than guns can ever be. A lot stronger. And this here stranger, he’s got it. He showed it on the Buttricks, and he’s gonna show it again. The cook, here, he was right. He knowed that some strange things was about to happen here, and we ain’t seen the end of them yet.”

  Undoubtedly the others agreed with this idea, and, although they made no comments, there was a good deal of frowning and biting of the lip among them as they strove to work out the puzzle. The pause that followed had a suspense of its own, as though they all expected that something more must happen immediately.

  They did not have very long to wait. Mike Jarvin came to the door of his shack and shouted: “Soapy!”

  Soapy obediently, but with a snarl, raised himself and went forward.

  “Soapy, you round up the boys. Everybody that ain’t working in the mine. I want ’em here.”

  “Except the cook?” asked Soapy, as though knowing that dignitary had special rights.

  “Curse the cook,” said Mr. Jarvin. “You do what I told you and bring ’em in.”

  So Soapy turned away, scratching his closely curled poll. He carried a terse message wherever he went through the camp. “Show up at the boss’s house, and show up pronto. Something queer is happening, boys.”

  He gathered in the men who tended the horses at the stables, the chore boys who idled near the mouth of the mine at this time of day, and the half dozen others who had odd jobs about the camp. A considerable crowd was presently arranged, when Soapy rapped at the door of Jarvin with enough force to make the door shudder from top to bottom.

  The door opened. Inside, Soapy saw Jarvin and the cripple sitting on opposite sides of a table, as though in the midst of serious converse.

  The gents is here,” said Soapy. “What you want me to do with ’em now?”

  “I’ll do the doing,” said Jarvin. “Go back with the rest of ’em.”

  So, presently, Jarvin stood at the door of the shack and turned his eyes back and forth over the group.

  “Come here, Hale,” he said. “I want you to look ’em over. Hand-picked, hard- boiled eggs is what you can see here for your own self. Nothing to come over this lot, old-timer. You could hunt a thousand miles north and south and east and west, and you would never rake in a worse lot than this here gang, I tell you.”

  He stepped aside. In the doorway appeared the big cripple. He had a mild but a steady eye as he turned it from face to face while Jarvin said:

  “Now, boys, my friend, Hale, is gonna stay here with us for a while. I want to make him comfortable and at home. The way that I’m gonna do that is to have one of you to take care of him. You can see that he ain’t got all the control over himself that a man would like to have. Enough to herd gents like the Buttricks, you seen. But not enough to be without the need of somebody to fetch and carry and to run errands for him. Y’understand?”

  There was a breathless pause. They had not objected to the beginning of the speech of Jar
vin. They had not objected when he inferred that they were a choice lot of rascals, for most of them were so far advanced in rascality that they were proud of that bad eminence and were glad to be classed so generously.

  “Now,” went on Jarvin, “what I want you to do. Hale, is to look over this lot and see which one of the bunch you would like to have as your man, to help you and make you comfortable, as I was saying before, because I want things to be dead easy and smooth for you in this here camp.”

  The cripple thanked him with a nod and a smile. “Does it make any difference who I choose?” he asked.

  “Not a bit,” said Jarvin. “They’re my men and they do what I tell them to do. And the pay that they get comes high. You pick.”

  “Very well,” said the cripple. “I think that I’ve made up my mind. There’s the man who will suit me exactly.”

  Soapy looked behind him. No one was there, but the cook was a little to one side.

  “Must be you, cook.” He grinned maliciously.

  “No,” said Peter Hale. “It’s you, my big friend.”

  Soapy whirled with a snarl. “Me?” he yelled. “Me to be sort of a cursed valet?”

  CHAPTER XXII

  THE OTHERS IN the crew were thunderstruck. Such a thought had apparently never entered their heads — the mere idea that any man could wish to have around him such a wild bear of a creature as Soapy. Even Jarvin was staggered.

  He caught the shoulder of Hale and murmured hastily: “You don’t mean that mulatto, Hale. Change your mind and change it fast. I’d rather have a wild horse to wait on my table than Soapy around me. Change your mind, I say.”