Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  On the other hand, the toiling scores who tore the gold for him out of the bowels of the earth were, one and all, his enemies. Was it because he had occasionally beat them at a game of cards? It seemed hard to Mike that they should take it so bitterly. Anyone who sat down to a gaming table should have his wits about him. It was a deadly encounter, and if he were not trained for this sort of battle, he was a fool ever to undertake it, and he should be grateful for having his money taken away from him as painlessly and swiftly as Jarvin usually extracted it. But there was no reason in them; they hated him profoundly and ceaselessly. When a new man was brought up to the mine, it was not twenty-four hours before he had heard the stories of the others and loathed the big boss as cordially as any of the rest.

  Mr. Jarvin, reflecting upon this, felt that the men who laid the treasure at his feet deposited gold with one hand, and with the other clutched a dagger behind his back. When would they have a chance to use it?

  At this, fat Mike, in some tension, drew forth his revolver and blew a shining bit of quartz to bits. Then he saw the glimmer of a face at the dark door of the cook house. But no one moved suddenly at the sound of a gun near the mine. If a murderer, for instance, were to creep up and plant a bullet in the small of Jarvin’s back, who would hurry to see him fall?

  Indeed, at this moment, might not that dark-faced rat of a fellow who worked in the stables — might not he be worming his way up the slope, from rock to rock, ready to polish off his boss?

  Jarvin whirled about and balanced the gun in his fat palm. The slope was still. But a little gust of wind shook a bush suddenly. Jarvin fired that instant. If there were a man there, let the fool take the result.

  A thin scream came back to the ears of Jarvin. He listened to it with a savage satisfaction. Hereafter he would never distrust his premonitions; he would lean upon them, as a woman upon her instinct.

  But no man’s inert body rolled down the slope from behind the bush — only the light form of a jack rabbit that had been cruelly mangled by his bullet.

  “Jarvin luck,” said Mike. “That’s Jarvin luck, by heaven.”

  He carried the rabbit to the cook. “Nailed it with a snap shot at forty yards, cook.”

  “Like the devil you did,” said the cook with a broad grin.

  He took the rabbit and turned his back upon his boss without another word. So much for human sympathy. Mike sighed as he turned away from the shack. Not that he turned his back upon it; he never actually turned his back upon any of his men, unless he had a guard along with him. But he moved in a circuitous route away from the cook house and back to his own shack.

  The work of cleaning out the Buttrick shack and making it ready for the occupancy of the new tenant was already under way.

  An ex-sailor and a polack miner were busily scrubbing down and sweeping out.

  “Hello, Pete!” Mike called. “That Soapy ain’t showed up yet!”

  “He’ll be here in time,” said Peter Hale.

  “In time for what?” asked Mr. Jarvin.

  “For all I need of him,” Peter said, “and I suppose that’s enough, since he’s working for me now.”

  Jarvin heaved a great sigh. “I’m giving up the most valuable rat of a man that I ever had, if I give up Soapy,” he declared with much feeling. “But if you want him, I suppose that you’ll have your own way about it and take him, eh?”

  Now all of this time, the machinelike stride of the big stallion had been sweeping Soapy away from the mining camp with wonderful speed, and, when a mile or two had intervened, the chills no longer chased themselves up and down his back. He felt sufficiently secure to ease the horse into a walk. But while he rolled a cigarette, he still paused and looked behind him from time to time. Why? There was nothing in the way of horseflesh, in those mountains, that could overtake the stallion, after the pace that Soapy had established; yet he felt that there was a pressing danger just behind him — just around the edge of the next curve.

  He knew that he feared the power of the mysterious other world, which lies outside of the ken of most people. What hands might reach toward him from that unknown abyss? Poor Soapy strove to shake from his memory the recollection of all that had happened in the shack when he had sat at the table opposite to Peter Hale. Yet the more he tried to drive the thought into an obscure corner of his mind, the bigger proportions it assumed.

  The fact that he had become a horse thief, on this day, and given up his old job at the Jarvin Mine was no matter. He was glad to be clear of the place. And he looked down with a shudder to the bruised and aching hand that trembled even now as it held a cigarette.

  Twice he reined in the big stallion with a sudden resolve to turn back, compelled by a fear of he knew not what. The third time, seeing the sun roll softly through the trees on the edge of a western mountain, he remembered the time that Peter Hale had appointed for his return. The mulatto whirled the stallion around and sent him swiftly on the back trail, not pausing to reason, only knowing that he wanted most desperately to reach the camp at the correct hour.

  Just as the sun, seen from this elevated plateau, dipped behind the lower hills, covering the sky with rich reds and purples, he came to the mine. Vastly relieved, he reached the stable and stripped the saddle from his big horse. The stableman growled at him: “What were you sent for, Soapy?”

  “Sent for?” echoed the mulatto.

  “Sure,” said the other. “We thought that you’d beat it, but this Hale, he said that he’d just sent you off on an errand, that you’d be sure to come back. And here you are.”

  Poor Soapy, standing with the bridle in one hand and the saddle in the other, gaped into the gathering dusk and wondered what was happening in this strange world. As to what had brought him back to the mine, he had no doubts now. It was the silent will of the white man, which covered the distance of miles and reached at his soul with an invisible hand. He felt that he had been helpless all the while, and, when Peter Hale had wished, he had brought the truant back.

  “Hypnotism!” gasped Soapy. “I’m gone already. How did he do it?”

  There was no answer for this last question. He was only sure that he was utterly done for, and that no matter what Peter Hale willed to do with him, he would be helpless to resist.

  He went into the shack. A bed stood in one corner of the room; there was a bunk in the other. The mulatto found that all his possessions, which he had left behind him in his hasty flight from the devil, had been distributed on pegs near the bunk. Around the bed were the belongings of the white man, and near the head of the bed a long rifle leaned against the wall of the house.

  Soapy took it up with rather frightened hands, noting how well worn the stock was, and how the barrel showed the effect of frequent polishing. The mechanism slipped frictionlessly beneath his touch. All was clean and neat as a pin in the lock of the weapon. Soapy told himself that this was the gun of one who knew well how to manage it, although it seemed to him that guns were hardly needed by such a formidable person as this same Peter Hale.

  A metallic clattering on the narrow verandah of the little house, and here was big Peter Hale at the doorway, with his crutches under his arms. He nodded most cheerfully to Soapy.

  “There is news already, Soapy,” he said. “We are going on a trip tomorrow, all three of us. You, Jarvin, and I. Will you be ready for that?”

  “A trip where?” asked Soapy, grown sullen.

  “A trip away from the mine, to gather any sort of deviltry that looks comfortable and pleasant to Mike Jarvin. Have you ever been out with him when he was harvesting that sort of grain, Soapy?”

  Soapy, in spite of himself, grinned broadly, showing two semicircles of flashing teeth. Those excursions were an old story to him. He began to wonder if the hypnotist might not, after all, prove a not altogether deadly burden to him.

  CHAPTER XXV

  THE GREAT MIKE Jarvin did not often descend upon the world. In the days of his prime, when his waistline was slighter, and his gun hand faster, Ja
rvin frequently showed himself abroad in the company of strangers. There was this great advantage. In the first place, he would thus find himself among strange faces, and, above all, his reputation could be shielded behind an assumed name. In the second place, even when men resented him in those days, they were not so apt to express their resentment with guns.

  Times had changed sadly. With profound melancholy great Mike Jarvin regarded the world upon which he looked down from his fastness of the mine. There, seated among a rebellious garrison, he kept his fort, as one might have said, against the constant assaults of fear. It was like sailing a rotten ship through a sea filled with reefs. Jarvin had seen the waters lapping upon the stones so often that he was almost grown accustomed to the pale face of peril. When he looked forth and wondered where he could go to seek diversion among strangers, and so escape from the more constant and almost more terrible dangers at the mine, he was in a quandary.

  He had once been slim enough to pass almost anywhere and melt easily into a crowd. But there was now a certain dimension of his jowls and a certain fullness of his waist that called too much attention his way. No sooner did he show his face than men were apt to say: “There’s Mike Jarvin.”

  After that, there was sure to be a reaching for guns, to make sure — each of them — that he was properly heeled for the approaching event. One would have thought that honest Mike was in the habit of taking money from others like a bandit, at the point of a Colt, whereas, as a matter of fact, he always used well-oiled, soundless, and painless methods at the gaming table. It made Mike sigh and shake his head, when he thought of the viciousness with which other men regarded him. He almost wished that he could open his heart to them and let them see how many virtues were harbored therein.

  However, on this day he was filled with a new hope. To his buckboard there were attached two strong-shouldered, gauntbellied mustangs, capable of unrolling 100 miles behind them in the course of the day, and yet be fresh enough to kick the hat off a man’s head at nightfall. With these powerful animals, he proposed to cruise farther afield than usual.

  As a rule, he had never dared to get farther away from the home port than a single hot ride, at full speed, would carry him — unless he had the Buttricks along, like a company of soldiers. But even with the Buttricks, there was a distinct limit to the distance over which he could cruise. The mine was comparative safety for him. The rest of the world was filled, as one might say, with dangerous, cruising sharks and submarines, all aware of the past of Mike Jarvin, all ready to tear him to pieces or to swallow him whole.

  But now he was filled with a new confidence. The Buttrick boys had been famous and gallant fighters, to be sure. But they were not like Soapy and the cripple. For many and many a month, he would really have preferred the single hand of Soapy to guard him, rather than the troublesome Buttricks. But he had not dared to approach the mulatto. He knew that Soapy’s hatred for him was of a well- ripened variety and that nothing in this wide world could be so thoroughly pleasing to Soapy as to have a chance to fasten silently his thick fingers in the throat of his master.

  Now, however, there was found for Soapy a master whose influence possessed such a mysterious strength that Soapy could actually be kept in hand. It amazed Jarvin and delighted him to his heart’s core. Here was he, Mike Jarvin, reasonably capable as a fighting man, but preferring that his enemies should come at him one by one. Behind him now stood the strange form of the cripple who was not a cripple — the wise, calm, terrible strength of Peter Hale. Behind Peter Hale there was a ravenous beast, a mad man, one who breathed terrible danger as another breathed the freshest and the purest mountain air. They made a powerful triangle. Was it any wonder, then, that he thought that he might safely venture down into the rich lowlands for another piratical cruise?

  From those lumber camps, those distant mines, those swarming towns, those populous cattle ranges, and those teeming farms along the river bottoms — from each of these sources there was a steady current of wealth flowing forth. To be sure, in these days of much banking, the rivers of wealth were apt to flow invisibly. But, after all, wise men were usually able to detect the presence of the invisible streams and sink a well to tap them. Men no longer carried about with them a great amount of gold dust or large sheafs of treasury promises to pay. On the other hand, they could sign I.O.U.s for much fatter amounts, and their courage was the greater in the dealing with high sums, just as their resources were the greater behind them.

  This was the way in which Mike Jarvin looked upon the fattening world beneath him, rubbed his hands together, and smiled, so that his eyes disappeared.

  “Ah, well,” he said, “who can tell? By night, we may be in a part of the country where they’ve never seen me before.”

  Jarvin proposed to cut straight across the domain of his mine to the purple hills against the horizon. On the farther side of those hills, he would have a chance to drop down among new men. There, perhaps, he could perform enough interesting exploits to warm his heart for something to come — enough rascality to let him chew the cud of evil joys in the deadly quiet of the mine.

  If danger should suddenly rear its head against him, he had gathered to his side the two most formidable men that he had ever encountered in all of his busy life — so much of which had been spent in rubbing elbows with expert fighters of one brand or another. The mustangs, he knew, would see them safely to the conclusion of their journey — in a single sweeping march. But they were not to be trusted alone. Besides the mustangs, there was Soapy’s long-striding, patient, untiring mule. And there was Jarvin’s own pet horse, of powerful build, yet fleet enough to stand off most challengers on the road. Besides these resources, they had the giant form of Larribee to carry their fighting ace, their Peter Hale, into the teeth of danger and out again.

  On the whole, Mr. Jarvin was contented. He spent some moments carefully looking over the luggage that had been prepared. When that was all arranged to his complete satisfaction, he added one little item that happened to be an old traveling companion and favorite of his.

  “I may be queer,” Jarvin said to Peter. “I may be sort of old-fashioned and out of date, complete. I see some of the boys have even took to the wearing of these automatic pistols that you just pull the trigger of them, and they sluice out a half dozen bullets as slick and as neat as you please. Well, Pete, they may have all of their newfangled contraptions, but I tell you that I’m exceeding partial to this here sort of an old gat. It ain’t fast, and it ain’t long distance, and it ain’t very accurate. But satisfying? I’ll say it’s satisfying! With this here same gun, I got into the way of a bunch of cattle raiders that was heading back to Mexico. I didn’t aim to interfere with them. I didn’t know them. I didn’t want to know them. But when I turned the corner of the trail, there I was, and there they was. They just had one thought... that I’d been sent out to stop them. Before you could wink, there was a gun glittering in the sunshine, and there was a pair of bullets humming past my ears. Well, it was sort of an emergency, you might say. I fetched up this here old pal of mine. I didn’t have no time for aiming. They was just getting the right and proper range of me, and they was about to erase my face. Pete, as you might say. I hitched this here old friend up above my knee, and I tipped the muzzles of her... and I pulled one trigger... and then, without looking, I just pulled the other. Son, it was a crime the way them slugs had spread. A minute before, there was all of them bold, bad cattle raiders heading for Mexico. And the next minute, here was the same bold, bad, cattle raiders all lying in the dust, some on their faces and some on their backs, and some praying wonderful fast, and some cussing wonderful loud, and all of them hound for a hotter place than Mexico. From that day to this, I’ve always made a point of carrying the old gun along with me. Even if drunk, you ain’t helpless, if you got her handy.

  “Hop in, Soapy. You’re gonna drive. And I’ll sit here beside you and watch your pretty face.”

  CHAPTER XXVI

  THE MUSTANGS JERKED the buckb
oard steadily along. Before they had dropped into a walk, they had spun out the long leagues that lay between them and the northern hills. When these hills rolled from blue haze into brown reality, and, when the road was winding up the steeper grades, Peter Hale was indescribably weary. He was tired of the racking in the springless seat of the buckboard, tired even of sitting on the smoothly gaited stallion. Most of all he was disgusted with life itself, which had tied him to two such companions.

  For it had not been a dull trip to Mike Jarvin. He only made sure that Peter was not looking at him from behind, and then he produced a capacious whiskey bottle. It was filled with moonshine, colorless as water, and terrible as gunpowder. It passed from him to Soapy and back again all of that long, dusty day, and, although he knew well enough that the mulatto would have enjoyed nothing more than a chance to wring his neck, still, with Peter in the background, it was safe to make a boon companion of Soapy.

  Mr. Jarvin reached a state of reeling hilarity when the hills were reached. He was bellowing forth noisy songs while the mustangs toiled upward, but, when they reached the crest of the rise, honest Mike pulled himself suddenly together with a great effort. Soapy, as sober as though alcohol had not passed his lips on that day, sent the horses onward at a smooth trot, while the buckboard jolted and rattled over the bumps on the downward way. Presently his hat off, and a tin cupful of water poured over his head, Mike allowed the cooling breeze of the sunset to blow through his hair until his wits cleared.