Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  The promoter was a shifty-eyed gentleman. He may have wanted to talk, but his mind was diverted by two distractions. One was the furious noise of the crowd, and the other was the heavy holsters adorning the hips of his new companions in the ring.

  “Why, gems,” he whined, “you all know that Bud is a husky sort. He’s never been licked, and heaven knows that he’s had fights enough. He said that he’d eat Canuck.”

  “Leave off what he said,” growled one. “The boys want to know why they shouldn’t get their money back. That’s all. They’re plumb anxious to find out why Bud thought that this here was a swimming pool and why he tried to do a high dive so quick. You call that a fight?”

  The promoter perspired more profusely than ever, but convincing words failed him. At this moment, by the grace of good fortune, he was rescued by help from an unexpected quarter. The mighty form of Canuck stepped forward, waving a gloved hand. At once silence fell over the assemblage.

  “Say, fellows,” Canuck said in a voice ridiculously high and thin, contrasted with his imposing bulk, “I’m sorry that the show ended so quick and that I happened to hit Bud so soon.”

  There was a wail of laughter and derision. It ended at once, and Canuck went on: “I ain’t here to rob you. I see a lot of husky gents out yonder. Maybe some of them would like to come in here with me. There’s a pair of gloves handy for the first gent that wants to try them on. And, as far as I’m concerned, I’ll keep on fighting till you say that you got your money’s worth.”

  On the whole, this was a good sporting proposition. But who would be apt to select himself to stand within the circle of the ropes and confront this swarthy monster who carried poison in the tip of either glove?

  There was a sudden backward movement through the crowd. Faces were turned, searching for a hero. There was a figure moving toward the ring, leaving a narrow wake of confusion behind him — a short, heavily built man, whose hat was brushed from his head as he struggled forward. His long, ponderous arms swept men from before him.

  “Lemme get in there at him,” said the stranger.

  The crowd parted before his voice and gave him a clear path to the ringside. In another moment he had laid his hold upon the ropes and hoisted himself with a swing of the body into the ring.

  “Gimme them gloves,” he ordered. “I’ll take on this here fighting man.”

  It was Soapy.

  A wild whoop followed. Every voice in that crowd was raised with joy as, with cunning eyes, they calculated the bulk of Soapy’s body and the length of his arms. He looked very much like business. Perhaps, after all, this would be a double show and very much worthwhile.

  The promoter seized opportunity by the forelock. “There’s fifty dollars in this for you, kid, if you stick out four rounds with him. Here’s the togs and Bud’s shoes.”

  Soapy drew the shapeless boots from his feet and contrasted the unshod bulk of his foot with one of the tennis shoes that had been drawn from Bud — poor Bud, who was now beginning to sit up and take a sick sort of interest in the proceedings.

  “I don’t want no togs,” said Soapy. “And how’m I gonna get even my toes into them shoes? Stockings is good enough for me. I got clothes enough on my back right now.”

  He stripped himself of coat and shirt and was revealed in flaming red flannel. Two men on either side were now tugging onto his hands the largest gloves that could be produced. They had to be sliced open at the sides, and still they cramped the formidable knuckles of the mulatto.

  In the meantime, there was a time of earnest and low-voiced conversation in the farther corner of the ring, where Canuck had lost some of his martial ardor. “Who is this bloke?” he asked his manager. “He looks to me like Sam Langford, multiplied by two.”

  “It’s fat, kid,” said the manager, peering anxiously at the mulatto’s vast bulk.

  “Fat nothing,” said the Canuck. “That’s muscle... all of it. A ton of it... inside of that red shirt. What’ve you led me up to here?”

  “Aw, look at him,” said the manager. “He knows nothing. Look at that.”

  Soapy, equipped for the combat, tried a few practice swings that whistled in roundabout fashion through the air.

  Canuck looked and then grinned suddenly. “All right,” he said. “It ain’t old Sam, after all. You tell them that I’m ready.”

  The ring was cleared. The groaning Bud was half led and half carried to the ground. Silence succeeded the excited murmurs of the spectators.

  “Are you ready, gentlemen?” asked the referee, yanking his cap lower over his eyes.

  “Ready,” said Canuck.

  “Start the music,” said Soapy. “I’m ready for dancing.”

  “Are you ready, Mister Timekeeper?”

  “Ready, doc.”

  “Then swat that bell.”

  The bell clanged, and Canuck slipped gracefully to the center of the ring. He extended his open gloves to shake hands. But Soapy saw the wide opening and swung mightily for the jaw. There was a roar of mingled laughter and hisses. Soapy had missed by a yard or more as Canuck danced back.

  And now — how beautifully Canuck was working. His arms flashed forward — twice with either hand he smote and stepped back, to let the colossus have room to pitch forward on his yellow face, stunned.

  The colossus did not pitch forward. Neither was he stunned. For Soapy did not even shake his head at these punches, but started blithely in at his enemy with both ponderous hands ready for action. The crowd shrieked again. Certainly the mulatto was not made of tender stuff, for the sharp, spatting sound of those blows had been heard throughout the gathering.

  The general plan of Soapy was to crowd his foe into a corner of the ring and there hit him — only once. But how strike a floating feather with a sledge- hammer? He rushed with might and main, but suddenly the poised form of Canuck dissolved into a blur, and from the side a pile-driving glove landed upon Soapy’s ear.

  This was different. That blow, which might have felled a bullock, did not daze him, but it split the rim of his ear and hurt like a hornet’s sting. He wheeled with a growl and smote with the full sweep of his right arm. Surely that blow drove straight through the glistening body of the phantom. Or had he, indeed, been able to slip deftly back and avoid the whistling ruin?

  The solid crack of a heavy glove lodged against his jaw, at the point called the button, and a dim mist scattered not unpleasantly over the brain of Soapy. He smiled, and, reaching out with his great left arm, he gathered in his opponent. This was no phantom, after all. No, it consisted of 230-odd pounds of magnificent muscle, writhing and struggling and snapping short-arm punches against the body and head of Soapy.

  Well, these love taps were no matter. He drew his foe closer to his breast. With half the power in his left arm he crushed the other to a suddenly gasping feebleness. And then he poised his terrible right hand to smite Canuck senseless.

  But a voice, piercing as a sword of fire, stabbed at his ear. “Leave go! Leave go of him, kid, or the mob’ll kill you! There ain’t any hitting in the clinches. I told you that!”

  “Is this here a clinch?” Soapy asked sadly. He flung the other from him. “This ain’t a fight. It’s only a dance,” Soapy cried in disgust. And he started to rush, just as the bell clanged the end of the round. The heavens rang with the cheering of that joyous throng.

  Kindly hands drew Soapy backward. “Kid, ain’t you dazed from the way he soaked you? This’ll freshen you up. You hurt him when you hugged him. Man, man, you got a fortune waiting for you in the ring. Here...”

  They doused him with water.

  “Leave that water be,” sputtered Soapy, “or I’ll break a couple of you in two, I say. Leave it be, and gimme a nip of gin... will you?”

  CHAPTER XXXI

  IN THE OPPOSITE corner, a voice complained: “Why didn’t you hit him, kid? What’re you doing in there?”

  “You sap!” gasped Canuck. “I hit him enough. What do you call hitting?”

  “Oh, you
hit him. But you didn’t set yourself. You got to soak him, Canuck. You’re losing a lot of prestige, letting a tramp like that stick out a whole round with you.”

  “He’s busted a rib for me, I think,” groaned Canuck. “He ain’t a man. He’s a bear. He squashed me, I tell you. They ought to disqualify him for that.”

  “Disqualify? You think that a disqualification would go down the throats of this gang? They’d fill us all full of lead! No, Canuck... but the first thing you do in the next round... you tear his head off.”

  “I’ll kill him!” snarled Canuck.

  As the bell clanged, he was off of his stool and across the ring before Soapy had so much as straightened up from his place.

  With the might of that long run behind him, with the impetuous sway of 230 pounds of trained and hardened muscle — with the snap and precision of the good boxer, Canuck smashed his fist straight against the point of Soapy’s jaw. The lunging force of the blow toppled the mulatto to the side against the ropes, snapping his head back across his shoulder.

  Soapy was not down, however. He rolled heavily back from the ropes, and Canuck, his mind bewildered because he had failed to knock the other straight through the ropes and among the crowd, met the mulatto with hammer strokes with either hand. He smote his terrible straight-driving left into the pit of Soapy’s bulging midriff. It was as though he had struck an India-rubber cushion with springs beneath it. He hammered his right again to the jaw, but the blow glanced futilely away. He smashed once more with the right for the heart, and he felt as though he had sprained his wrist, beating against a stone wall. Before him there was a smooth globe of head and face, split asunder by the widely grinning lips.

  “My, ain’t you in a hurry, mister,” remarked Soapy as he smote at the phantom in haste.

  It was a descending punch. It missed the jaw for which it was intended — missed by a foot — but it grazed along the ribs of Canuck, and he felt as though he had been scraped along a sharp reef of stone. He drew back, gasping, dazzled by this miracle.

  “Kill him, now that you got him started, Canuck!” shrieked the familiar voice of his manager.

  But Canuck knew better than that.

  The whole crowd was seething with a terrible joy in this carnage. It looked to them as though the mulatto were being torn to shreds. But, as the yellow face rolled toward Canuck, the champion chattered from the side of his mouth to the referee: “You better stop this. I don’t want to kill him. I can’t afford to pay funeral expenses.”

  The withered face of the referee puckered with interest. But then he shook his head. “You ain’t hurt him yet, Canuck.”

  “I could cut him to ribbons. He ain’t got a guard. Look at this.” He stepped in and struck twice suddenly across the flailing hands of Soapy. The blows landed on either side of Soapy’s head. But his forward progress was not halted. He rolled closer, and Canuck braced himself to block the driving punch.

  It smashed through his erected guard, flinging away his right forearm. It dashed the back of his left glove glancing against his jaw. A thoroughly well- blocked blow, surely, and yet the head of Canuck rang, and he was shaken to his feet, while he heard the voice of the referee, drawling: “I dunno that I can stop the fight while he’s still coming after you, Canuck.”

  There was no more blocking of punches, after that. The thing to do, obviously, was to avoid the rushes of the mulatto by lightness of foot, and that was what Canuck intended to do. He sped about the ring with wonderful lightness, striking out when an opening offered.

  But suddenly here was the mulatto standing still in the center of the ring. “You stand up and fight, you sneaking, low-down skunk. This ain’t no foot race. It’s a fight.”

  That, after the battering that Soapy had been taking, brought a roar of sympathetic delight from the crowd. They began to look closer and they saw, as the bell clanged and the men went to their corners, that the face of Soapy was apparently unmarked. In spite of the dreadful punishment he had taken, he was still without a vital injury. And he was actually grinning.

  Now he sat on his stool, and, waving his eager handlers away, he leaned over the ropes to ask: “Ain’t there none of you gentlemen that can make that sucker stand up and fight? Speaking personal, I sure want to give you your money’s worth.”

  It brought a shout of approval from them. And when they stared up into that shining, yellow face they saw that this was not meant for waggery.

  A stern-faced gentleman raised a handful of banknotes. “I got five hundred dollars, boys, against any man’s hundred that the yellow boy lasts out the four rounds!”

  Soapy stood up with a roar. “Look here, white man, d’you think that these folks is foolish? Don’t they know that I’m gonna kill Mister Canuck the minute that he stands still?”

  The bell clanged in an uproar of laughter and cheering. And Canuck rose with no undue haste from his stool.

  “My arms are numb to the shoulders,” he told his manager. “I soaked him with everything that I had when I first went after him that round. And it didn’t matter. My fists just bounce off of him. What’m I gonna do? What’m I gonna do?”

  The manager growled through his set teeth: “If only the newspapers don’t get hold of this! Looks like your wrists are made of mush. Looks like you was only playing with him. Well, keep away from him. You keep away and pepper him from a distance.”

  It was all that Canuck could do. He went back into the third round and danced until his knees sagged with weariness. For, after all, there was hardly fifteen pounds less bulk for him to carry than Soapy trundled around the ring. And with the passage of every moment Soapy was growing more active. The meal that he had stowed away had settled now. He felt lighter and more at ease, and he was growing momently more accustomed to a setting with which the other had been familiar for so long. He was faster afoot, now, and twice as fast with his hands. He followed with half punches, making easy play, his head up, yellow fire in his eyes, as he skipped forward, waiting for a chance to strike. And the game was still sledge-hammer against feather, except that there was less wind to buoy the feather from moment to moment.

  Luck, however, had something to do with the matter before the end. Canuck, ducking out of the way of an overarm swing, slipped a little, and the blow glanced from the top of his head. It was enough to make his knees spring beneath him. He staggered back until his shoulders struck the ropes and he recoiled. The recoil threw him out of the way of flying destruction.

  He wheeled to strike again. The lurching, low-built body of the mulatto glided in under his punch, and a lifting blow struck Canuck on the breast. It lightened his feet and hurled him back. He strove to regain his balance, but it could not be managed. Canuck staggered, reeled, and fell headlong against the lower rope on the farther side of the ring. As he sat up, dizzy and sick, he heard the deafening roar of the crowd.

  He knew what that sound meant. Always, before this, he had heard it as he was beating an opponent into submission, but now it was, for him, like an avenging roar of the sea, and the heart of Canuck sickened and grew weak within his breast.

  Then came the mercy of the bell, clanging out like silver music to his ear.

  He dragged himself to his feet. And here was his manager at his side, drawing his arm across his shoulders and helping him to his corner.

  “Kid, what happened?”

  “Shut up. Don’t ask me. He shot me with a cannon ball. It wasn’t no fist. What a man he is!”

  Canuck sank with a gasp on his stool and heard a voice barking from the side and beneath him: “Five hundred says that the Negro knocks out Canuck in the next round. Who takes that? Or a thousand, if you want it.”

  “What odds do you offer, Jerry?”

  “Two to one...”

  Canunk closed his eyes. Suddenly he seized with a great nostalgia for the deep glooms and the cool silences of the Northern woods. Let others climb the flaming ladder of ambition. But only to be freed from danger and from pain.

  So thought Canuck
, and then came the crisp voice of his manager: “Kid, you’re done if you don’t duck out of this. You got to foul him. Understand?”

  CHAPTER XXXII

  TO THE DESPERATE mind of Canuck, the clang of the bell seemed a solution. His wind was more than half exhausted. There was a telltale tremor in his knees. And along the ribs and in the back of his neck there was an ache and a numbness from the shock of the glancing blows that Soapy had dealt him. What would happen if one of those terrible strokes landed, full and fair, upon head or body? He thought of crushed bones and shrank with a shudder. Then he saw the yellow face of the mulatto coming toward him, grinning and eager.

  “You came along, white man. We’re gonna have a good time, this here dance. Will you stand up and fight? Or do I have to keep right along playing tag with you?”

  And he launched a glistening, flashing, terrible length of arm at him. The torn edge of the glove flicked and cut the lip of Canuck as he flinched backward. Canuck struck with both hands at the wide-open target in front of him, but if his might had been useless when his strength was still fresh upon him and when his confidence was like strongest steel, what was it now — now that his self-belief was so dreadfully diminished?

  Two hundred and fifty pounds of monstrous humanity shook with terrible laughter as Soapy mocked this effort and sprang at Canuck with a renewed energy.

  There was no weariness in this inhuman creature. He thrived upon blows. They were like the breath of life to his nostrils. And Canuck was barely able to spring back out of the way of lunging danger.

  “Ten to one!” a voice was bellowing above the tumult of the throng. “Ten to one on the Negro!”

  And another voice: “Ten to one on Soapy!”

  Who had learned that name?

  Soapy himself heard, and his battle frenzy left him long enough to allow him to turn his head and scan the throng. Who knew his name in that crowd? That knowledge meant danger to himself and double danger to his master. If there was someone there who recognized him, that same man would be most apt to know Mike Jarvin. And recognition would probably spell disaster.