Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  “I never done nothing so slick in my life,” declared Mike. “Now, sir, would you ask me what I got away from that game?”

  “Over fifty thousand?” asked Peter.

  “Over sixty-five thousand, or I’m a sucker,” Mike declared. “I was too smart for them. I’ve took away lots of money out of a game before this, but I never managed to do it and have the folks standing around just hankering to have a whirl at me. I never was able to manage that before. Why, Pete, this here town is a gold mine to me. They got no eyes. I could teach a dog to sit up and beg in the time that they give me for shuffling the cards and dealing them and patting them into shape. I could run up the pack every time. I was doing it with two crimps, toward the last. And that sucker sitting there like a soldier. ‘I will not leave my post,’ says the soldier. ‘Take this, then,’ says I, and saps him for another ten thousand.

  “Sweet? Oh, it was sweet, Pete. I never got into anything that was half so cheerful as that game. And now they’re all in there pitying me. Heaven keep ’em from recognizing me before I get another whirl at ’em. There’s still money in that gang. And now they’re itching and anxious to pluck me. Well, I’ll lose enough thousands now to stall them along, and then I’ll clean up. You can’t tell what’ll happen the next time that I get a lucky streak.” He clasped the muscular shoulder of Peter with his fat hand and laughed like one half choked with joy.

  “Let me see the I.O.U.s,” Peter said.

  “Here they are,” said Jarvin. “You count them over. They come to... hey, son, what’s the main idea?”

  For Peter had slipped the bits of paper into his pocket.

  “That’s sixty-five thousand that you’re rumpling up and smearing around!” exclaimed Mike Jarvin.

  “It’s too much,” said Peter. “You’ll have to get along with the cash that you stole out of that game.”

  Mike groaned. “It ain’t possible. Are you gonna double-cross me? You, an honest man? Is that the size of your price? Pete, are you gonna double-... ?”

  “Stop whining,” said Peter. “Do you think that I can stand by and see you rob a cousin of mine with your dirty card tricks? No, Mike, this stuff goes back to him. Walk on... the game is up, so far as I’m concerned.”

  Mike Jarvin uttered one long burst of curses; he even went so far as to reach significantly toward a hip pocket, but then he suddenly changed his mind, and, whirling on his heel, he strode off down the street.

  Peter started out in search of his cousin. It was easy to find him. If Charlie had been a figure of some importance before the game, he was a celebrity after it. The clerk in the hotel took Peter instantly to the room of Charles, and in answer to his knock the door was instantly opened by that pale-faced gentleman himself.

  When he saw Peter, he recoiled from him with a gasp of astonishment. “Peter! What in the world brought you? Come in.” He dragged Peter inside and closed the door in haste. “You’ve heard about it, Pete?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s the finish and the smashing of me, Peter,” Charles said huskily. He began to walk hastily up and down the room. “I’ve put in a life of hard work... you know that. I’ve played exactly the sort of a game that my father wanted me to. And now I’m floored and done for.”

  “Done for?”

  “Done for with Dad. He’ll have no use for me. I tell you, there’s one thing that he hates worse than poison, and that’s gambling. He says that a man who gambles deserves to take his medicine, because he’s a hopeless fool. I could have committed a murder without breaking up Dad as much as the news of this will. He’ll have no confidence in me. No more than if I were a dog. After the things that have happened between us, I suppose that you’ll be glad to see me down. But it’s a life work that I’ve thrown away.”

  “A third of a life,” Peter corrected gravely. “That’s all there is to it. Why, man, you’re a child. You’ve got plenty of years ahead of you.”

  “To start at the bottom... and climb?” his cousin said bitterly.

  “You have something worth climbing for,” replied Peter.

  “You mean Ruth, by that. I know that’s what you mean. But that’s no good. I’ve never been able to get her to talk about the future with me. I never can get her to say yes, since she got to know you. But I know that it would be very easy to have her say no. I’ve had to handle her with gloves, Pete. And now that I haven’t a thing to offer her...”

  “Why, Charlie, you’re not disinherited yet.”

  “Not yet,” said the gloomy Charles, “not until Father hears the news, but, five minutes after that, I’ll be a gone goose. I tell you, he’s iron. Absolute iron, and, when he knows what I’ve done, he’ll wipe me off the slate. He’ll adopt someone. He’ll give his property away.”

  It seemed to Peter that there was only one side to this grief.

  It was not for the broken and disappointed heart of his father that Charles had any thought, but only for the property loss that lay before Charles himself.

  However, Peter could delay no longer in the business for which he had come. He drew the notes from his pocket and laid them on the table. “As a matter of fact, Charlie,” he said, “that fellow was simply having his joke with you. He knew you all the time, and he didn’t intend that he should rob you. The cash that you put in the game was enough for him. But he didn’t want to steal your money.”

  Charles, taking the I.O.U.s, one by one, examined them, and turned with a stare to Peter. “I try to make it out,” he said, “but it’s no go. I try to understand, but cursed if I can. Did you hold that poor, old, fat simpleton up and rob him?”

  Peter shook his head. “Let me tell you the name of that fat old simpleton. Why you haven’t known his face, I don’t quite make out. But the fact is that he’s Mike Jarvin.”

  “Jarvin?” gasped Charles.

  “Jarvin, the crook.”

  “My heavens, and I... what a fool I’ve been!”

  “It rather looks that way.”

  “But what... ?”

  “He didn’t mean to rob you, Charlie. He simply wanted to give you a lesson, and that’s why he took your notes.”

  “But Jarvin never gave back a penny he’d stolen. Not in his life!”

  “Even Mike finds certain things that he can’t do. Even he wants to play the game straight, in a way. That’s a peculiar thing. I can’t explain it. But I suppose that taking that money from you was a little too easy.”

  Charles struck his hands together with an exclamation. “I could have sworn that the fat man was hardly more than a simple old half-wit, who’d drifted into a bit of luck in a mine, somewhere. And now it turns out to be Jarvin. Why, Pete, I only wonder that he didn’t come to tell me about it himself. Why did he send you?” And he fixed Peter with a cold and hostile eye.

  “The fact is,” said Peter, “that he had something else on his hands. He knew that you’d be here. And he sent me along...”

  “Sent you?”

  “I’m working for him, Charlie.”

  “You’re... working... for... Jarvin?”

  “Yes. Since...”

  “That’s why you disappeared? And that’s why your father is nearly going crazy?”

  “That’s it,” said Peter.

  “But why, man? In heaven’s name, why?”

  “I’ll tell you,” said Peter. “I’ve always had a touch of wild blood in me, Charlie. And I grew a bit tired of the dull life on the ranch. I hated to trouble Father. But, after all, the ranch is pretty well on its feet now. So I broke away and went up to Jarvin’s mine, where there’s a chance of seeing life rough and in the raw, you know.”

  A flash of contempt glinted in the eyes of Charles. “Very raw, indeed, I suppose,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Peter, “very raw indeed.”

  CHAPTER XXIX

  THE CARE THE Soapy gave to orders was never unreasonably great. For he felt that if something was due to his master, still more was due to himself. So, when he had put up the saddle horses, he did
not wait long before making a selection of horses. He merely rubbed down the tired mustangs, and, having freshened them with a swallow of water and a mouthful of crushed barley, he started out to make the trade. It was easily done. The town was filled with men eager for buying or trading. In a few minutes he found a buckboard with a serviceable pair attached to it. He found the owner and offered Mike Jarvin’s span in exchange. There was not much delay. The stranger liked trim-cut nags, and those of Jarvin were far neater about the heads than his own. $100 in boot had been permitted by Jarvin; Soapy got the new pair for a $40 bonus, and he went back with fresh horses and $60 profit in his pocket.

  But money to possess was only money to spend, to the mulatto. He harnessed the team to the buckboard and gave their heads to a youngster to hold. Straight across the street from the hotel stable, there was the lighted front of a lunch counter, newly erected and glowing with bunting for this grand occasion. The stools in front of the counter looked like so many thrones to Soapy. And although. the order had been specifically that he should remain in person at the heads of the team, his hunger spoke in a loud voice.

  He crossed to the eating place and slipped onto the first vacant stool. Three cooks worked vigorously at a range of oil stoves. Clouds of steam from hot milk and fragrant, boiling coffee rolled out to bathe the soul of Soapy. There were columns of smoke, ascending from hissing griddles, where hamburger steaks were sizzling and turning black and brown. French-fried potatoes, too, bubbled in little tubs of fat and were drawn out, dripping hot grease and exuding a delicate aroma to the nostrils of the quivering Soapy.

  “And you?” asked the waiter as he swept the dishes of the last customer from the oilcloth before Soapy.

  “Me?” asked Soapy, half closing his eyes to consult his sense of smell.

  At that moment a gruff voice said at his side: “White folks before colored, man. Gimme a pie!”

  Soapy rolled his eyes. It was almost the first time in his life that he had failed to snatch up the opportunity to make trouble with his fists. But now his brain and his senses, all save one, were benumbed with delight. There was all of $60 in his pocket. What with the recent gain on the big horse, and now this second profit, he felt like a millionaire. So he let the insult pass.

  The words merely brought a suggestion to his mind. “Pie for me, too,” said Soapy.

  “Apple, blackberry, peach... ,” began the waiter.

  “Apple,” said the stranger.

  “Apple,” echoed Soapy.

  Two plates, with a generous wedge of pie upon each, were rattled upon the counter.

  The deep voice of the man beside Soapy said: “Ain’t there no hope of more’n this? Is this what you call a piece of pie, waiter?”

  “Leave it be!” snapped another man with a sharply rising nasal twang. “How can you expect to fight in the ring in another hour if you got a whole pie in your...”

  “Leave me be,” snarled the first, seizing the piece. Soapy was growling at the waiter. “This’ll do to start. Now... a pie. A whole pie!”

  He had gobbled up the piece in a gulp or two and now he extended his great hand and gripped the big apple pie as it was brought toward him. As he ate, he rolled his little eyes upward and to the side. He saw a dark-browned giant sitting beside him, glowering down.

  “Now curse my heart,” said the big man, “but I think that Negro is eating that pie just to get a rise out of me, Bill.”

  Bill, flaming in a crimson necktie, set off with a sparkling diamond stick- pin, gripped the bulging shoulder of his charge.

  “Now, you come on, Bud, will you? You come on, will you? They’ll be hankering for a’sight of you before the fight. Then let ’em see you.”

  “Oh,” said Bud, “I would like to take one pass at the Neg...”

  But he let himself be dragged from the stool, while Bill frantically growled: “Would you be busting up your hands on that head? Like hitting a marble dome. You come on along with me.”

  So they disappeared, and Soapy, as the last of the pie flowed down his throat, cast yearning eyes after them. He wanted to take big Bud apart and examine his interior. Rarely in his life had his passion for fighting waxed so hot and high in him, but on the other hand the pie had merely awakened his appetite, and the leading aspiration of his life was consuming the mulatto. From the corner of his well-occupied mouth he had been bellowing for hamburger. A great portion of it was brought for him. He reached for the nearest loaf of bread, hurling the contents of a pitcher of water into the street, then extended the pitcher to be filled with coffee and hot milk for his use. And that was only the beginning.

  At the end of some thirty or forty minutes, he wiped his pale-purple lips and sighed.

  “If this here was a restaurant,” Soapy stated regretfully, “I might be able to make sort of a meal out of it. Hand me that lemon pie.”

  It was handed. Cooks and waiters stood before him in an awed but grinning circle.

  “Where’s the folks gone?” murmured Soapy around the disappearing pie.

  “The fight,” said the waiter, mopping the counter with an anxious hand, in hopes of a tip.

  “Oh,” Soapy said as his mind traveled back to an earlier incident in the evening. “The fight, eh?” His recollection surmounted fried potatoes, jam, two kinds of pie, hamburger steak, strings of luscious sausages, and other minor incidentals in this light lunch. His thoughts arrived at the departed form of big Bud. “That sap... that one that they call Bud... he fights, I guess?” asked Soapy.

  “Sure, he fights with Canuck Pete. And a darn good licking he’ll get.”

  “From Canuck, eh?”

  “Yep.”

  “Well,” said Soapy, “maybe I’ll go and see that fight.”

  “I dunno that you got time to get to it. You hear ’em hollering now?”

  The noise of the shouting guided Soapy through the night. He arrived at a high board fence with a flare of light and a dense fragrance of tobacco smoke inside. Parting from $1 at the gate, he stepped inside the fence in time to see his recent acquaintance, Bud, climb through the ropes of the ring that had been arranged on a rough platform in the center of the field. And the crowd roared again.

  It was easy to see that Bud was the county champion. When he stood up in the flare of the great gasoline lamps, he looked worthy of their betting. Thick muscles padded his hairy chest, and his dark arms swept down almost to his knees, rippling with ponderous strength from the shoulders down. His black hair bristled above that cramped forehead, and his mouth was stretched in a grin of confidence.

  But still the hope of seeing him licked swelled high in the mulatto when he saw the other warrior rising and shaking off his bathrobe. Canuck possessed every whit as much bulk as Bud. In addition there was a taper finish to his limbs that promised speed as well as power. He stepped forth into the light, showing a lean, cadaverous face, shadowed with unshaven beard, and furnished with a great bony jaw, built to defy battering. What chiefly interested the mulatto was the eye of this man, thoughtful, deep-sunk, and filled with a keen fire. It reminded Soapy of another eye that he knew well — the eye of big Peter Hale, the worker of mysteries.

  What mysteries, then, would this warrior enact in the ring? He was a man of some fame, was Canuck. He had already risen some distance up the ladder of ring fame, and perhaps he would rise still further. That natural fighting heart and fighting instinct that had made him celebrated through the hardy Canadian lumber camps had, for some months, been directed and polished by a clever manager. This manager was of the old school, letting his proteges fight their way into the acquisition of greater skill. What he taught five days a week, he liked to see his man show in the ring on the sixth evening. So the Canadian was taken touring through the countryside, taking on all comers, and winning usually with consummate ease. There would be plenty of time to take him East after the big purses and the famous fighters, when he had acquired a trifle more skill with that long left arm, and a bit more snap in his deadly right.

  It
was plain to every man in the field that the battle would not be long, as Bud, with all his brute strength and confidence, squared off before the fiery eye and the well-poised body of the other.

  The cries were only: “I bet on you to stay three rounds with him, Bud! You stick to him! Don’t you let him spank you with that right, Bud! Hang on and get my money for me, kid!”

  But no one was prepared for what actually happened. Bud, scowling with a tense battle fury, rushed from his corner as the bell sounded. He swung with either hand. The other slipped beneath those flailing hands, and then dipped up and smote from beneath with his left hand.

  Perhaps he had not intended to strike quite so hard. Perhaps he was not able to gauge the power of his own punching any too accurately. At any rate, the terrible Bud flung his hands high above his head, reeled blindly, and dropped, stunned, upon the floor of the ring.

  The crash of his fall sent a wide echo over the field.

  CHAPTER XXX

  THERE WAS NO question of counting, on the part of the referee. He took the head and shoulders of Bud, and the timekeeper took his feet. After he was dragged to his corner and a bucket of water poured over his head, the crowd realized that their dollars had been paid for no more of a show than this. And then a grumble began in the rearmost ranks — where crowd commotions always start — and it spread to a mumbling in front and then to a whisper of discontent toward the ring. Another wave of sound immediately recommenced from the rear of the host. It was a snarling that brought an ugly murmur toward the center of the field. Then, as at a universal signal, a great howl of rage and disgust went up.

  The deputy sheriff left in haste — to try to find his chief, he said. The promoter of the match started to find the gate, but, before he had gone half a dozen steps, he was recognized, and violent hands were laid upon him. He was carried in a forward wave and deposited with a heave in the ring, while two or three sturdy cattlemen clambered in beside him.

  “Now you tell the boys what the main idea might be,” they said to him.